HARIRI, ABU IMOBAMMED AL KASISt BEN Am, a most celebrated Arabic philologist and poet, b. at Bassoralt, on the Tigris, in 446 H. (1054 A.D.). Little is known of his life and circumstances save that he was the son of a silk-merchant (whence his,. name Hariri—harir, silk). Hariri wrote several valuable grammatical works, and his lyrics are of a high order. But the most famous of all his writings, and indeed one of the most famous compositions of all times and countries, is his book entitled 111akimehs (Sittings). This may best be described as a novel, or a collection of rhymed tales, loosely strung together, the center of which is always a certain Abu Seid from Seruj, who, witty, clever, amiable, of pleasing manners, • well read in sacred and profane lore, but cunning, unscrupulous, a thorough rogue in fact, turns up under all possible dis guises, and in all possible places—sermonizing, poetizing, telling adventures and tales of all kinds—always amusing and always getting money out of his audience. The brilliancy of imagination and wit displayed in these strange adventures, their strikh g changes, and dramatic situations, have hardly ever been equaled; but more wonderful still is the poet's power of language. The whole force of the proverbial fullness of ex pression, spirit, elegance, and grandeur of the Arabic idicen, iii has brought to bear on his subject. His work—of which one of the greatest Arabic authoritie,c has said that it deserved to be written in gold—has indeed become the armory as well as the mind of all Arabic writers since his day. Poets and historians, grammarians and lexicographers,
look upon the 1akumehs as the highest source of authority, and next to the Koran, as far at least as language is concerned. His book has been translated either entirely or partially into nearly every eastern and European tongue, has been the prototype of in numerable imitations, the most successful of which is the one in Hebrew, Taehkemoni, by Jehuda Al-Charisi. The, first complete edition of the text appeared in Calcutta, 1809-14, in 3 vols.; another by Caussin de Perceval, in Paris, 1818; one much more valuable, chiefly on account of its commentary by Silvestro de Sacy, appeared in Paris, 1821-22 (re-edited 1847-53).
The first (Latin) translations in European tongues of single Makamehs were made by Golius (1650) and ' Schultens (1731, etc.) But the palm of all translations is due to Ilfickert, who, with a power only inferior to that of Hariri himself, has so completely repro duced the spirit and form of the work in German in his Vervandlungen des Alm Seid b. Serug, first published in 1826, that the Makamell itself has become is favorite form for similar compositions in Germany. English translations, but which fall far short of the German one, were published in 1767 by Chapellon, and in 1850 by Preston. Munk and De Sacy have rendered some portions into French.