Ibn Naqiya al-Baghdadi

Ibn Nāqiyā al-Baghdādī (, full name ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Dāwūd Ibn Nāqiyā, born 15 March 1020 in Baghdad, died in the same place 15 February 1092) was a noted Arabic-language litteratus.

Life Ibn Nāqiyā spent his childhood in a district of Baghdad previously occupied by the palaces of the Tahirids and their outbuildings. Apparently he did not travel much, and his only known patron was one Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Shahrazūrī. Ibn Nāqiyā composed an elegy for the Shāfiʿī scholar Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī and has accordingly been thought to have been a disciple of his. In Matthew Keegan's estimation, he 'compiles his examples from the Arabic poetic tradition to provide, on the one hand, the Jāhilī background for the Quran and, on the other, an account of the way poets responded to and developed quranic imagery. The effect is to highlight the intertextualities between the Quran and the Arabic poetic tradition ... Ibn Nāqiyā seems to delight in exploring the intertextualities between the quranic similes and the Arabic poetic tradition'.

Most noted, however, is Ibn Nāqiyā's collection of maqāmāt, a particular form of satirical rhyming prose. Preserved in a single manuscript, his Maqāmāt are considered a long-neglected treasure of Arabic literature. Herein the author makes fun of all conventions in an offensive and subversive way. The principal character is the versatile al-Yaschkuri, who cunningly and eloquently makes his way through the world. Sometimes disguised as a preacher, sometimes as a beggar, sometimes as a pious man, he travels the country and masters the challenges of life and survival in an outrageous and clever way.

Editions and translations al-Jumān fī tashbīhāt al-Qur'ān Scholarly Arabic editions of this text have been published by Aḥmad Maṭlūb and Khadīja al-Ḥadīthī (Baghdad, 1968), Muṣtafā al-Ṣāwī al-Juwaynī (Alexandria, 1974) and Muḥammad Riḍwān al-Dāya (Beirut, 1991); Keegan views the first of these as the best. Keegan gives an English translation of the commentary on Qur'an sura 76, al-Insān.

Maqāmāt Oskar Rescher, Beiträge zur Maqamen-Literatur (Istanbul: Maṭbaʻa-i Aḥmad Kāmil, 1331 [1914 CE]), part iv, pp. 123–52 (edition of the Arabic) Maqāmāt Ibn Nāqiyā, ed. by Ḥasan ʿAbbās (Alexandria, 1988) (critical edition of the Arabic) Ibn Naqiya, Moscheen, Wein und böse Geister: Die zehn Verwandlungen des Bettlers al-Yaschkuri, trans. by Stefan Wild, Neue Orientalische Bibliothek (Munich: Beck, 2019), (German translation).