It's widely recognised as being one of the most incredible, virtuosic, even over-the-top story collections in all of Arabic writing. Yet if you're a reader in English, you will have probably never heard of the esoteric adventures of the world's most eloquent con-man, gathered together in the 11th century Maqamat of Al-Hariri.
There’s a reason for this, says Arabic scholar and professor Michael Cooperson. Many have called Al-Hariri’s seminal work “untranslatable”.
“Al-Hariri does wonders with Arabic,” says Cooperson, who also teaches Arabic at UCLA.
“But all the stories rhyme and many of the episodes also include riddles, puns, palindromes, and even visual tricks, like speeches consisting entirely of letters without dots. You can’t make it rhyme all the time in English. But I’m loving the challenge. I’ve set myself the goal of producing a wildly experimental text, just as Al-Hariri did.”
The Maqamat of Al-Hariri is Cooperson's current project – a translation for NYUAD's ever-growing and increasingly impressive Library of Arabic Literature. And anyone attending the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature's Desert Stanzas event on Thursday (March 9) will be able to hear a reading of his work in progress.
"Most of the Maqamat takes place in cities because that's where the swindler, Abu Zayd, can find lots of people to con," says Cooperson. "But a few take place in the desert. In one of them, the narrator – Abu Zayd's friend al-Harith – goes there to learn eloquence from the Arabs. That episode is full of words supposedly used only by the nomads, so my translation puts it into cowboy slang from the American West.
“Mostly though, the desert figures as a scary place where you don’t want to spend too much time, but I’m looking forward to it.”
It will be a while before the Maqamat of Al-Hariri is published, but in the meantime, Cooperson has been enjoying plenty of plaudits, including last year's Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding, for another Library of Arabic Literature publication: The Life of Ibn Hanbal.
Renowned for his piety and knowledge of hadiths, the ninth-century scholar Ahmad Ibn Hanbal’s biography intrigued Cooperson as much for its depictions of everyday Baghdad life.
“If you want to know how they sold chickens in the market or got the drainpipe fixed on their houses, it’s all in there,” he says. “He was a husband, father, teacher, and ultimately what we might call today a symbol of resistance to unjust authority. And fortunately his admirers wrote down everything they remembered about him.
“Ahmad’s personality is riveting, even in print: he was hard on himself but forgiving of others, often in a wonderfully endearing way.”
This is the aim of all Cooperson’s translations – to make Arabic works readable and engaging for a wider audience. So what does he find his students make of ancient Arabic literature, often written 1,000 years in the past?
“Many students come from Arab or Muslim families and want to explore their heritage,” he says. “Often they’re happy to find things they recognise, but they’re also surprised to find how much work they have to do to understand something written that long ago.
“I try to give them a wide range of things to read in the hope that something piques their interest. So if they like poetry, I try to find modern song adaptations – like Souad Massi’s rendition of Majnun Layla – to give them a feel for the words beyond the printed page.”
And there’s surely no more evocative place to feel the power of these works than at a camp in the UAE desert.
• Desert Stanzas 2017 is at Al Maha Desert Resort and Spa on Thursday, March 9, from 5.45pm. Cooperson also appears at Poetry Mix: Journeys, at Al Ras 1, InterContinental on Friday at 4.30pm.
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