Analysis of the Representation of Seven Iranian Cities in Maqamat Badi-ol-Zaman Hamedani

One of the arts of writing that emerged in the Arabic literature during the Abbasid period was the art of Maqama writing. This method of literary writing began with Badi ol-Zaman Hamedani and culminated in Abolghasem Hariri’s works. Maqama expresses social, cultural, political, etc. issues in literary forms which begin humorously and end with skillful description. 16 out of 51 Maqamats in Hamedani are named after Iranian cities and cultural and geographical cities of Iran are mentioned in their text. Therefore, considering the high frequency of the names of Iranian cities in Hamedani’s Maqamats, especially in their titles, the present descriptive-analytical study, seeks to investigate how these seven important cities were represented in Maqamats of Badi-ol-Zaman. The study also intends to provide a statistical analysis of the ratio of Maqamats named after Iranian cities in comparison with other Maqamats, and explain the reason for naming and why these titles were chosen for Maqamats. This has been done by the analysis of the text including the name of the city and the rhetorical and semantic study of the title of Maqamats. The study showed that the reason for naming some Maqamats after Iranian cities was diversifying Maqamats, mentioning the signs of civilization and urbanization of these cities as a spatial element in the internal events of Maqamats, in addition to describing the weather conditions, culture, society and also describing some common customs in these cities.  Also, the concealment of the often begging and pretending hero of the story in the noisy environment of the city has also been considered.  

The present research attempts to analysis the representation of Iranian cities in Maqamats of Badi-ol-Zaman Hamedani in a descriptive-analytical study by using library resources. The data is analyzed by investigating the content of Maqamats and also the analysis of that part of the text in which the name of the city is mentioned. Then, the reason for its naming and the linguistic and non-linguistic references in the text are explained. 

In half of Maqamats, the names of the cities are used in the text or in the titles. The title is in fact the key, the entrance and the threshold for entering the text, with which the reading of the text begins and ends, and always remains in the mind and heart of the audience even if the text itself is vanished (Balavi et al, 1398: 70). The narrator first refers to the city and the location of the events, but in some cases s/he suffices with the same reference and hastily refers to the protagonist. Urban environment and urbanization have their own characteristics namely noise, congestion, the often unknown identities of the people of the city to each other, and cultural diversity in terms of culture, social, economic factors are among these characteristics. In most of the events, the hero tries to enter a gathering anonymously and amaze the audience with rhetoric and sermons, and by so doing impress the audience with his advice and receive their financial aids. Or, with a messy dress and appearance, cause the audience to feel pity for him and thus achieve his financial desires. In any case, the appropriate space for this is the bustling environment of the city, and these characteristics are vivid in Iranian cities. Therefore, unlike most literary genres in Arabic literature, which develop and reach their peak in the pristine environment of deserts, its origin is often the city, society and urban community. Therefore, the element of place in Maqamats, despite the need to repeat it, is not very prominent. 

Hamedani has used Iranian cities as a spatial element and at the beginning of Maqamats, he puts his audience in a different environment to present different topics, meanings and images to him and to be able to present his Maqamats in a new space with various illustrations, make it available to the audience and make them more fascinated by his writings. The author of Maqamats sometimes refers to the environmental conditions of the region or city where the events of the story took place, and in addition to literary narration, he sometimes pays attention to the geography of that region and even to the religious beliefs of the people.The names of Iranian cities were not the primary element and the main subject of Maqamats, but these names were only mentioned briefly and other issues were considered.  The use of the environment of Iranian cities in Maqamats’ titles as the element of place and context of events was with the intention of keeping the protagonist anonymous, the distance of these cities for the Arab audience, and finally a variation on the frequently repeated subjects of the Maqamats.