The lecture provides the preliminary findings of a study of the textual history of the Maqāmāt of Badi' al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī. It discusses different extant manuscript collections of Maqāmāt, examines the ways that the different manuscript recensions of the Maqāmāt reflect features of the work's literary history, and presents new material absent from the standard edition of Muhamad 'Abduh published in the late nineteenth-century. The conclusion of the talks argues that the prior to the edition of 'Abduh, the Maqamat of al-Ḥamadhānī was an open corpus that grew as a result of the influence of the larger collection of Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥarīrī.

About the speaker

Dr. Maurice A. Pomerantz is Assistant Professor of Literature at NYU Abu Dhabi. He received his BA, MA, and PhD all from the University of Chicago. Dr. Pomerantz's research focuses on Arabic literature, literary performance and comparative approaches to the study of premodern literatures. He is particularly interested in exploring the ways that economics, politics and geography inform the reading of literary texts. Prior to his appointment at NYUAD, he taught for four years in the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (MEIS) at NYU-NY.

The lecture is organized by the Events and Outreach Committee of the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies as part of a lecture series on Maalim al-Turath al-Arabi and will be delivered in Arabic.

For more information, please contact nalshaar@aus.edu.