Abstract:
This article provides the editio princeps of a previously unknown maqama attributed to Badi. al-Zaman al-Hamad.ani (d. 398-1008). It begins with a review of the scholarship on the manuscripts of Hamad.ani's Maqamat and discusses how the text of this lost maqama was uniquely preserved in one manuscript, Yale University, Beinecke Library, Salisbury collection no. 63. This manuscript, copied in 603-1206, was well-known to European scholarship, having been in the possession of Everard Scheidius (1742-1794), Silvestre de Sacy (1775-1838), and Edward Eldridge Salisbury (1814-1901). The maqama, preserved therein, describes a fraudulent doctor's ale of medicinal compounds allegedly composed of rare materia medica. The text of this maqama, which the editors have entitled al-Maqama l-T. ibbiyya, is then provided in facsimile, a critical edition, and a fully-annotated English translation. A detailed analysis of the maqama follows, in which the form, subject matter, language, and style of this maqama are discussed in relation to the known corpus of Hamad.ani's other maqamat. The article concludes with several hypotheses about the possible authenticity of this lost work. © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.