ABSTRACT
Around the beginning of the creation of comic Hebrew maqamas in the twelfth century (e.g. Ibn Zakbel's Speech of Asher ben Yehuda) Abraham ibn Ezra composed the philosophical and allegorical treatise Hai ben Mekitz, which displays some maqama characteristics, inasmuch as it is written in elaborate rhyming prose and features a wandering hero. A superb Hebrew adaptation of Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān by the Arab philosopher Avicenna (which is not in rhyming prose), Ḥai ben Mekitz is clearly not a maqama according to the strict literary definition. Indeed, there are in Hebrew few maqamas which meet all the requirements of the genre. Some of the works generally considered to be maqamas neither rhyme nor contain metrical verse, while in others the heroes neither wander through the world nor engage in the variety of exploits proper to the maqama, which is characterized by disguises, deceit, and jugglery of all types, entertaining situations of song competitions and philosophizing. Others make no effort towards the required linguistic humor — verbal ambiguity, witty puns, word-play or stylistic games (such as a letter which can be read forwards or backwards with opposing meanings, or in which each word contains a certain letter, etc.). Some of these "maqamas" are in fact collections of rhymed parables (occasionally supplied with a flimsy framing narrative) or of stories in which the didactic element bulks steadily larger — for as time went on the author's inventiveness failed. Amusing new situations and fresh verbal surprises could no longer be devised, and platitudes increasingly took their place. Concomitantly, Jewish seriousness of purpose and a gnawing doubt as to the moral aim of the frivolous maqama must certainly have troubled both authors and readers. Hence even in the work of Al-Harizi, the classic composer of the Hebrew maqama and translator of Al-Hariri's Arabic maqamas, do we find "serious" maqamat which contain informative passages on the history of Spanish Hebrew poets and poetry, descriptions of his visit to Palestine, and so on.
