Multilingual poetics in Arabic and Persian Maqāmāt: Between al-taṣannu‘ andsabkMultilingual poetics in Arabic and Persian Maqāmāt: Between al-taṣannu‘ and sabkMahmoud

Since early Islam, the need for technical Arabic prose writers was held high as one of the top ‘state’ priorities. In effect, scribes and secretaries, both Arabs and non-Arabs alike, gained growing prominence and prestige in the Umayyad and Abbasid states, including Rawḥ ibn Zinbāʿ al-Judhāmī (d. 84 AH/703 CE) and ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib (ca. 70–132 AH/ca. 689–750 CE). Almost concurrently, prominent translators and literary figures such as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (ca. 102–139 AH/ca. 721–757 CE) and al-Jāḥiẓ (160–225 AH/776–868/69 CE) were instrumental in the evolution of Arabic literary prose, notably through their contributions to translation and balāgha (poetics). Those contributions have had a multilingual edge as well, culminating in the birth of the Arabic maqāmāt. Created and promulgated by Badīʿal-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 395 AH/1007 CE) and Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim al-Ḥarīrī (d. 516 AH/1122 CE), the Arabic maqāmāt brought about the literary concepts of al-taṣannu‘ (artfulness) and sabk (style), all evidently feature cross-fertilizations between Arabic and Persian cultures. Multilingual poetics are also featured in Maqāmāt Ḥamīdī by the Persian author Ḥamīd al-Dīn Balkhī (d. 599 AH/1202–3 CE). He composed his maqāmāt in a way that endorses the use of sabk, in the Persian sense of the word, which denotes a literary style. In his endeavor to write in a unique style, Balkhī used bilingualism as a literary device that evokes al-taṣannu‘ and sabk as guidelines of composition for both Arabic and Persian prose.