Maqamat / the eloquent con man's repeated scams
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 87). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Genre late 10th–early 11th century; al-Hariri 11th–early 12th century; celebrated illustrated copy 1237
Region: Arabic-speaking world; illustrated example Iraq
Workbook date-sort bounds: 970 CE to 1237 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
A narrator repeatedly meets the persuasive swindler Abu Zayd in new cities and predicaments. Al-Hariri's fifty episodes circulated, were copied and translated, and became illustrated comic storytelling.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
Maqamat were copied and translated extensively, and the same fictional trickster recurs across an authored series.
What remains uncertain
Authorial serialization, rhetorical study and elite manuscript production are not independent popular adoption. A con-man protagonist and many copies do not establish grassroots remaking.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria