7 - Al-Hamadhānī, al-Ḥarīrī and the maqāmāt genre

Summary

The telling and hearing of anecdotes has been a favourite pastime in all ages and places: round the bedouin camp-fire, in the literary salons of ʿAbbasid Baghdad, in the English public house and over the after-dinner port. The nature of an anecdote varies enormously. In length it may range from the retailing of the briefest piece of repartee, to what is virtually a short story; in content it may deal with a humorous or pithy saying, a remarkable event, a piece of literary criticism, a riddle, or even (in the Arabic ambience) a grammatical observation or a well-expressed piece of religious homily. But the anecdote proper has three features. First, the point of the piece shouldbe set against a background of circumstantial detail which adds to its vividness. Secondly, it is either true or presented as true: a repartee gains greatly in effect if presented, for instance, as “what Churchill once said to de Gaulle”, even if it is manifest that the teller has no means of knowing what Churchill really said, and an anecdote is hence most often presented on the authority of a transmitter (Ar. rāmī) or narrator, whether historical or imaginary.