The Descent of the Messiah — Page 56
THE DESCENT OF THE MESSIAH are from Harīrī or Hamadhānī ¹. It is regrettable that he showed no signs of embarrassment while making such criticism. He failed to consider that even if these few sentences were not intended to coincide with other texts, as often happens in literary works, and instead were meant as quotations, what objection would there be? In fact, in Hariri's book itself, there are some Quranic verses that have been written as quotations, as well as some lines and verses that belong to other people and have been written with- out any alteration. Some lines of Abul Fazl Badi uz-Zamān are found in it verbatim. Should it now be said that the entire Maqāmāt-e-Harīrī is a stolen work? Some have gone to the ex- tent of alleging that Abul Qasim Hariri's entire book was written by someone else. Some say that he was once introduced to a no- bleman as a great writer, but when the nobleman, wanting to test him, ordered him to write an essay in Arabic, he failed to do so, and this caused him no small embarrassment. Yet, he was greatly honoured by the men of letters and his work Maqāmāt-e-Harīrī is held in great respect, even though it does not serve any great religious or intellectual purpose. Hariri was unable to write a true story or write about the mysteries of knowledge and truth in an eloquent and expressive manner to prove that he could subordi- nate words to meanings. Rather, from beginning to end, he has subordinated meaning to words, which shows that he was not at all capable of describing true events in eloquent and elegant Ar- abic. Hence, anyone who is concerned with meaning and whose objective is to state truth and knowledge, will not find any es- sence in the dry bones collected by Hariri. It is quite a different matter if, by the will of God, someone's 1 Maqāmāt Al-Hamadhānī (Assemblies of Hamdhānī) written by Badi'uz- Zaman is a collection of Arabic stories written in the 9th century. It is considered a brilliant work of Arabic literature. [Publisher] 56