[EARLY ARABIC EDITION IN CONSTANTINOPLE] Kitâb maqâmât al-Harîrî fî l-luga al-'Arabiyya wa-l-funûn al-adabiyya bi-t-tamâm wa-l-kamâl wa-l-hamdu li-llâh

ABÛ MUHAMMAD AL-QÂSIM IBN ALÎ IBN MUHAMMAD IBN UTHMÂN AL-HARÎRÎ OF BASRAH, (1054-1122), Matbaa-i Âmire, Kostantiniyye [Constantinople - Istanbul], [AH 1280] = 1864. Contemporary quarter leather bdg. with dark blue boards. Small 4to. (27 x 19 cm). In Arabic. 418 p. Framed text. Chippings on the spine, and a large stain on the rear board, but the interior is clean. A very good copy.Uncommon early Arabic edition of Maqamat [i.e. Assemblies of Hariri] printed in the Ottoman capital Constantinople, consisting of a collection of 50 stories written in the Maqama style, each one identified by the name of a city in the Muslim world of the time, a mix of verse and literary prose, as Al-Hariri's masterpiece and best-known work, which has been regarded as one of the greatest treasure in Arabic literature after the Koran and the pre-Islamic poetic canon. The stories tell of actual adventures and especially the verbal pronouncements in verse or in prose of a roguish and peripatetic hero, Abu Zayd fr