Numbered as a suggested reading path, easiest first. The maqāmāt are independent tales with no fixed classical order — you can read them in any sequence.
1
Classical literary
al-Maqāma al-Baghdādiyya
المَقَامَةُ البَغْدَادِيَّة
The Maqāma of Baghdad — broke and craving dates in the Karkh bazaar, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām himself plays the swindler: he hails a country traveller as a long-lost friend, invents the death of the man's father to keep him off balance, then runs up a feast of roast meat and almond pastry in his name before slipping away and leaving him to the bill and the beating. Twenty-three sentence cards with an original English translation, vocabulary keyed to root, and language and historical notes throughout.
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2
Classical literary
al-Maqāma al-Māḍirīyah
المَقَامَةُ المُضِيرِيَّة
The Maqāma of the Meat Stew — a guest is dragged to dinner by a host who appraises the price of his door, his door-knocker, his house, his servant, and every ingredient in the meal before it's finally served, until his guest flees rather than sit through one more digression. Twenty-five sentence cards with English translation, vocabulary keyed to root, and language and historical notes throughout.
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3
Classical literary
al-Maqāma al-Waʿẓiyya
المَقَامَةُ الوَعْظِيَّة
The Maqāma of the Sermon — the one with no con in it. Idling by a Basra landing-stage, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām finds a crowd around a stranger preaching with real and sustained power: the world as a bridge to be crossed rather than built on, a snare baited with scattered grain, and a long elegiac qaṣīda on the dead who lie beneath the earth they once owned. Only at the end does he learn who the preacher is. Thirty-four sentence cards with an original English translation, vocabulary keyed to root, and language and historical notes throughout — the densest sajʻ of the three, so it sits last on the path.
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More al-Hamadhānī maqāmāt being added — check back regularly.