900 Years of Trickery: Al-Ḥarīrī From Leiden to Los Angeles.

Al-Ḥarīrī's sixth/twelfth-century story collection (the Maqāmāt , or Impostures) is famous for its rhymes, obscure vocabulary, and complex wordplay. Despite its difficulty, it was used as a text to teach Arabic, a function it continued to serve even after it was introduced to Europe in the seventeenth century CE. After a reverent reception at the hands of early Dutch and English scholars, it was condemned by later French readers as emblematic of "Oriental decadence." Of the various translations, the most successful are those into Hebrew and German, both of which celebrate the ludic element of the original. The recently published English translation attempts to work from the same principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]