oetical, moral,
encomiastic and satirical discourses, supposed to have been spoken or
read in public assemblies. Poets, historians, grammarians and
lexicographers look upon the 'Makamat' (Assemblies or Seances) as the
highest authority, and next to the Koran, as far at least as language
is concerned. It contains a large portion of the language spoken by
the Arabs of the desert, such as its idioms, its proverbs, and its
subtle delicacies of expression; and, according to Ibn Khallikan, any
person who acquires a sufficient acquaintance with this book to
understand it rightly, will be led to acknowledge the eminent merit of
the author, his extensive information, and his vast abilities. A great
number of persons have commented on the 'Makamat,' some in long and
others in short treatises, and many consider it to be the most
elegantly written, and the most amusing, work in the Arabic language.
Hariri was born A.D. 1054, and died at Busra A.D. 1122. He left some
other good works in the shape of treatises, epistles, and a great
number of poetical pieces, besides those contained in his 'Makamat.'

There are two translations of the 'Makamat' into English. One by the
Reverend Theodore Preston, printed under the patronage of the Oriental
Translation Fund, London, 1850. It contains only twenty of the fifty
pieces in verse, with copious notes, while an epitome of the remaining
thirty pieces is given at the end of the book. The other by the late
Mr. Chennery, which ends with the twenty-sixth assembly or seance. The
whole work was edited in Arabic, with a select commentary upon it in
French, by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, and this was reprinted in 1847.
Ruckert also made a very free translation of it in German verse, which
reached a third edition in 1844, but this differs widely from the
contents of the original, though it is said to be more pleasing and
attractive to a general reader.

After the Muslim legal sciences had been established upon the fourfold
foundations of the Koran, tradition, general consent of communities,
and the analogies derived therefrom, then philosophy and mathematics
began to flourish by translations made either directly from the Greek
or through Syriac and Persian.

In former times, during the reign of Nausherwan, a Persian monarch of
great renown (A.D. 530-578), there was some intercourse between
Persian and Byzantine philosophers; several books on logic and
medicine had been translated from Greek into Persian