Abu al-Ma'ali al-Haziri

Abū al-Maʿālī Saʿd ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥaẓīrī, often known as Dallāl al-kutub ('the Book Merchant') (fl. twelfth century CE), was a book-merchant, scribe and littérateur from Iraq. He is noted for composing the first known Arabic text entirely devoted to riddles, the Kitāb al-iʿjāz fī l-aḥājī wa-l-alghāz (Inimitable Book on Quizzes and Riddles).

Life

Al-Ḥaẓīrī's epithet records his birthplace, the village of al-Ḥaẓīra, to the north of Baghdad. He moved to Baghdad early in his life.[1]: 251  There he came to establish a bookshop at Bāb Badr in Baghdad's book market, which became such a nodal point in the intellectual life of the city that it became the setting for al-Maqāma al-Baġdādiyya by al-Wahrānī (d. 575/1179); this work speaks of 'the shop of the sheikh Abū l-Maʿālī (…) He is the orchard of erudition, the archive of the Arabs (…) he has a share in every branch of learning'.[1]: 252 

At one time or another, al-Ḥaẓīrī travelled to Syria and thence on hajj to Medina and Mecca, but seems otherwise to have been based in Baghdad.[1]: 252 

Al-Ḥaẓīrī's teachers included al-Jawāliqī (d. 539/1144-45), Ibn al-Shajarī (d. 542/1147-48), and his wide network of associates included the preacher Abū Manṣūr al-ʿAbbādī (491-547/1098-1152-53), the ascetic Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Fāriqī (d. 564/1168-69), the noted poet Ibn Aflaḥ (d. c. 535-37/1141-43), the scribe ʿImād ad-Dīn al-Iṣbahānī (519-97/1125-1201), the physician al-Ḥakīm al-Maghribī (d. 549/1154), and the grammarian Ibn al-Khashshāb (492-567/1099-1172).[1]: 251–52  His patrons included the caliphs al-Muqtafī (r. 530-55/1136-60) and al-Mustanjid (r. 555-66/1160-70).[1]: 251 

Works

In honour of the writing of his friend Abū Manṣūr al-ʿAbbādī, al-Ḥaẓīrī reportedly composed the compilation al-Nūr al-bādī min kalām al-ʿAbbādī, along with al-Kalim al-Fāriqiyya fī al-kilam al-Ilāhiyya in honour of Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Fāriqī. To caliph al-Muqtafī he dedicated the work Lumaḥ al-mulaḥ (Sparkles of Witticisms), an anthology focusing on examples of paronomasia from both verse and prose. Almost entirely lost, too, is his Zīnat al-dahr wa-ʿaṣrat ahl al-ʿaṣr (The Adornment of the Age and the Contemporaries' Very Best), but it is known to have influenced al-Iṣbahānī's Kharīda. Twenty private epistles, their style also characterised by paronomasia, do survive, along with a number of poems, mostly epigrams (and especially love-epigrams).[1]: 252–53 

One work of Al-Ḥaẓīrī's survives in whole, however: his Kitāb al-iʿjāz fī l-aḥājī wa-l-alghāz bi-rasm al-amīr Qaymāz (Inimitable Book on Quizzes and Riddles, Composed for the Emir Qaymāz), commissioned by and dedicated to emir Mujāhid al-Dīn Qaymāz al-Zaynī (d. 595/1198-99), of which four manuscripts are known:

  1. Mashhad, Library of the Shrine of Imam Reza, Adabīyāt (15), No. 2
  2. Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Adab No. 498 (215 folios). Eighth-century AH.
  3. Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Balāġa Taymūr No. 71. 1299AH/1881-82CE.
  4. al-Kāẓimiyya, Baghdad, library of Dr. Ḥusayn ʿAlī Maḥfūẓ. A copy by Maḥfūẓ of the Mashhad manuscript.

It seems to have been composed during the reign of Caliph al-Muqtafī (1136–60CE). Although some poems from it have been printed, as of 2019 the work had never been edited as a whole. According to the preface, 'upon his return from the hajj, Mujāhid ad-Dīn Qaymāz, who during his trip had been entertained with riddles as his fellow-travellers avidly engaged in riddle contests, searched for a book on this subject and having found none, commissioned al-Ḥaẓīrī to compose this work'.

In the manuscript Adab No. 498, the book begins with a sixteen-folio essay on riddles followed by an anthology of riddles of around two hundred folios.[1]: 253–54  The introductory essay discusses criticisms of the riddle form, examples from ḥadīth literature showing the legitimacy of puzzles, al-Ḥaẓīrī's classification of different types of riddles, and the Arabic terminology by which riddles are referred to. It is the first surviving substantial discussion of riddles in Arabic.[1]: 254–61 

The anthology itself, in Adab No. 498, contains 863 riddles (823 in verse, totalling around 3300 lines, and 40 in prose), of which 600 are attributed to named authors; 94 different authors and solvers are named. Around 640 of the riddles seem not to be recorded elsewhere. Al-Ḥaẓīrī usually provides explanations of each, usually his own (but quoting 18 solution poems and 11 prose explanations by others), as well as commentary on their quality; forty-four riddles are left unsolved. Most of the riddles are true riddles (based on metaphor alone), but 111 are muʿammayāt (riddles based on revealing the letters which comprise the solution).[1]: 261–64 

Authors prominently represented in the anthology are:[1]: 264–66 

References
  1. Nefeli Papoutsakis, 'Abū l-Maʿālī al-Ḥaẓīrī (d. 568/1172) and his Inimitable Book on Quizzes and Riddles', Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 109 (2019), 251–69.
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