Hariri, al-

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Hariri, al-

 

(Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariri). Born 1054; died 1122. Arab writer.

Al-Hariri was the son of a wealthy merchant. He received a good philological education and later wrote philological treatises in which he attacked the introduction of colloquial speech into the written language. He wrote a divan of verse and a collection of epistles. In a cycle of maqamas, al-Hariri presented vivid pictures of life in the Arabian Caliphate in the period of its decline. An expert on classical Arabic and an excellent stylist, al-Hariri often resorted, in his maqamas, to wordplay based on alliteration, synonymity, and the use of arcane expressions and proverbs. For centuries, the maqamas of al-Hariri were considered a model of artistic perfection in Arabic literature.

WORKS

Maqamat al-Hariri. Beirut, 1958.
In Russian translation:
Vseobshchaia istoriia literatury, vol. 2. Edited by V. Korsh and A. Kirpichnikov. St. Petersburg, 1885. Pages 357–60.
Literaturnyi Azerbaidzhan, 1972, no. 2, pp. 104–13.

REFERENCES

Krymskii, A. E. Arabskaia literatura v ocherkakh i obraztsakh. Moscow, 1911.
Borisov, V. M., and A. A. Dolinina. “Makamy al’-Khariri i printsipy ikh khudozhestvennogo perevoda.” Narody Azii i Afriki, 1972, no. 2, pp. 113–22.
Literatura Vostoka v srednie veka, part 2. Moscow, 1970. Pages 287–91.
’Abd al-Nafi Talimat. Ahl al-qudyat abtal al-maqamat fi al-adab al-Arabi. Horns, 1957.

V. M. BORISOV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.