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Hikayat Abi al-Qasim: A Literary Banquet

Online ISBN:
9781474418782
Print ISBN:
9781474402316
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
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Hikayat Abi al-Qasim: A Literary Banquet

Emily Selove
Emily Selove
University of Exeter
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Published online:
22 September 2016
Published in print:
1 March 2016
Online ISBN:
9781474418782
Print ISBN:
9781474402316
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press

Abstract

ḤikāyatAbī al-Qāsim, probably written in the 11th century by the otherwise unknown al-Azdi, tells the story of a gate-crasher from Baghdad named Abu l-Qasim, who shows up uninvited at a party in Isfahan. Dressed as a holy man and reciting religious poetry, he soon relaxes his demeanour, and, growing intoxicated on wine, insults the other dinner guests and their Iranian hometown. Widely hailed as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, the Ḥikāya also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts. Painting a picture of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, he is a figure familiar to those who have studied the ancient Cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters and saints in literatures from the Mediterranean and beyond. This study therefore compares the Ḥikāya, a mysterious text surviving in a single manuscript, to other comical banquet texts and party-crashing characters, both from contemporary Arabic literature and from Ancient Greece and Rome.

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