“These ‘Makamat,’ which contain serious language and lightsome,
And combine refinement with dignity of style,
And brilliancies with jewels of eloquence,
And beauties of literature with its rarities,
Besides quotations from the ‘Qur’an,’ wherewith I adorned them,
And choice metaphors, and Arab proverbs that I interspersed,
And literary elegancies, and grammatical riddles,
And decisions upon ambiguous legal questions,
And original improvisations, and highly wrought orations,
And plaintive discourses, as well as jocose witticisms.”

The design is thus purely literary.  The fifty “sessions” of Hariri, which are written in rhymed prose interspersed with poetry, contain oratorical, poetical, moral, encomiastic, and satirical discourses, which only the merest thread holds together.  Each Makamah is a unit, and has no necessary connection with that which follows.  The thread which so loosely binds them together is the delineation of the character of Abu Zeid, the hero, in his own words.  He is one of those wandering minstrels and happy improvisers whom the favor of princes had turned into poetizing beggars.  In each Makamah is related some ruse, by means of which Abu Zeid, because of his wonderful gift of speech, either persuades or forces those whom he meets to pay for his sustenance, and furnish the means for his debauches.  Not the least of those thus ensnared is his great admirer, Hareth ibn Hammam, the narrator of the whole, who is none other than Hariri.  Wearied at last with his life of travel, debauch, and deception, Abu Zeid retires to his native city and becomes an ascetic, thus to atone in a measure for his past sins.  The whole might be called, not improperly, a tale, a novel.  But the intention of the poet is to show forth the richness and variety of the Arabic language; and his own power over this great mass brings the descriptive—­one might almost say the lexicographic—­side too much to the front.  A poem that can be read either backward or forward, or which contains all the words in the language beginning with a certain letter, may be a wonderful mosaic, but is nothing more.  The merit of Hariri lies just in this:  that working in such cramped quarters, with such intent and design continually guiding his pen, he has often really done more.  He has produced rhymed prose and verses which are certainly elegant in diction and elevated in tone.

Such tales as these, told as an exercise of linguistic gymnastics, must not blind us to the presence of real tales, told for their own sake.  Arabic literature has been very prolific in these.  They lightened the graver subjects discussed in the tent,—­philosophy, religion, and grammar,—­and they furnished entertainment for the more boisterous assemblies in the coffee-houses and around the bowl.  For the Arab is an inveterate story-teller; and in nearly all the prose that he writes, this character of the “teller” shimmers clearly through the work