4to. Volume I: [3 pp., contents], 390 pp., / Volume II: [3 pp., contents], 415 pp., Arabic text within borders, modern hard back binding, small cut to outer margin of first three leaves without loss to text, contemporary ink comments on margins, paper slightly browned, ex-library stamp, first three leaves of Volume I soiled, occasional yellowing, Boulaq Press, Cairo, second edition, 1300 A. H./ 1882.

Synopsis

Abi al-‘Abbas al-Sharishi (1181-1222) was primarily a scholar of the Arabic language, and his commentary on the Maqamat al-Hariri, the famous and influential treatise, “is undoubtedly the most complete and the most famous”of many major commentaries on al- Hariri’s work”.
Al-Sharishi was a student of the great traveller, Ibn Jubayr. Al-Naboulsi, in his book al-Haqiqah wa-al-Majaz fi Rihlat Bilad al-Sham wa Misr wa-al-Hijaz, mentions that he sat down with Ahmad Afandi ibn Barri and ‘He showed me the Rihla by Sharishi providing explanation of Maqamat al- Hariri, in which he passed through Baghdad and attended a sermon of Abu-L-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi. Then he went to Damascus in Syria and to the two sanctuaries. We found the manuscript in the scripts of my father the late Isma’il Afandi Ibn al-Nabulsi. I took it and read it for some days and then returned it to him”. [The Heritage of the Arabo-Islamic learning, p. 337].