Badi' al-Zamān al-Hamadānī or al-Hamadhānī (Persian: بديعالزمان همدانی; Arabic: بديع الزمان الهمذاني التغلبي; 969 in Hamadan، Iran – 1007) was a medieval poet and man of letters.
[1][2] He is best known for his work the Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani, a collection of 52 episodic stories of a rogue, Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari, as recounted by a narrator, 'Isa b. Hisham.
However, very little is known of such travels and reliable evidence is thin, leading scholars to caution that, as al-Hamadani’s fame grew, such visits became the stuff of legend.
[7] In 383/993, he stopped at Zaranj, where he was received at the court of the Saffarid ruler, Abu Ahmad Khalaf ibn Ahdmad.
He eventually settled in Bushanj, near Herat where he married into the Abu-‘Ali Al-Husayn ibn Muhammad al-Khushnami, a local noble family and spent his final years .
[9] After he settled in Herat, he came under the protection of Abu'l-Hasan Isfaraini, who was the vizier of Mahmud of Ghazni, the sultan of the Ghaznavid dynasty.
Selected letters have been published in works, such as Silvestre de Sacy's edition of six of the maqamas with French translation and notes in his Chrestomathie arabe, vol.
[13] Al-Hamadani’s innovation was to apply saj' (an ornate form of rhymed prose), to the retelling of secular anecdotes.
Each story has two main characters, the narrator, (usually Isa ibn Hisham) and a protagonist, (usually Abu I-Fath of Alexandria, who is a rogue and a trickster).
The anecdotes, presented in al-Hamadani’s maqamat played into a growing interest in the activities of Arabic low-life, especially beggars, tricksters and criminals.
[20] The maqama follows a loose structure of seven parts, namely (1) Isnad, (2) general introduction, (3) link (4) episode (the core of the narrative), (5) recognition scene, (6) envoi and (7) finale.