The Evolution of al-?arizi’s Ta?kemoni

Michael Rand’s The Evolution of al-?arizi’s Ta?kemoni investigates the stages whereby the text of al-?arizi’s maqama collection as we currently know it, on the basis of manuscripts (and the editio princeps), came into being during al-?arizi’s travels in the East over the course of approximately the last ten years of his life. The discussion is based on a close examination of the textual evidence, the investigation of a number of relevant literary motifs, and a comparison to al-?arizi’s model, the Maqamat of al-?ariri. The book includes a catalogue of fragments of the Ta?kemoni in the Genizah and Firkovitch IIA collections, and some previously unpublished material that can reasonably be claimed to belong to a heretofore unattested version of the Ta?kemoni.