Reason and Revelation or a Philosopher's Squib (The Sixth Maqāma of Ibn Nāqiyā)

Ibn Nāqiyā (d. 1092) is far less well-known than Badiʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 1008), creator of the maqāma genre and luminary of the Arabic literary canon. After al-Hamadhānī our attention turns normally to al-Ḥarīrī (d. 1122), who refined certain (mainly linguistic) features of the genre and who has subsequently eclipsed the fame of other authors. Ibn Nāqiyā comes chronologically midway between al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī; he amplifies more the irreverent tone than the linguistic register of al-Hamadhānī. The sixth maqāma of Ibn Nāqiyā (one of ten surviving pieces) shows in the author a quite detailed knowledge of falsafa , and from it we sense the growing tension between falsafa  and orthodox Sunni theology in the eleventh century C.E. This constitutes more than just the social and discursive backdrop to the text: the dichotomy structures the text whose statement of fatalism is as erudite (in an Aristotelian scheme) as it is facetious - and therefore ultimately incoherent. This article lays bare in a close reading the nature and tone of the parody in this burlesque piece.