Lawat al-Shaki wa Damat al-Baki
- Author died
- 764 AH
- Editions
- al-Matba'ah al-Rahmaniyyah
Lawat al-Shaki wa Damat al-Baki (The Agony of the Complainant and the Tear of the Weeper) is an Arabic literary work composed in the form of an amatory session (maqāmah) dealing with the themes of love and romantic passion. It is widely attributed to the Mamluk-era scholar, historian, and man of letters Salah al-Din Khalil ibn Aybak al-Safadi (696–764 AH / 1296–1363 CE).
Authorship and Attribution
The attribution of the text has been the subject of divergence among bibliographers and biographers. While several catalogs and modern editions list the work under al-Safadi, Hajji Khalifa recorded it primarily under the 10th-century AH Shafi'i scholar and preacher Zayn al-Din Mansur ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Dimashqi, known as Khatib al-Saqifa (d. 967 AH / 1560 CE), describing it as a fine maqāmah, while noting the possibility that it was by al-Safadi or perhaps that both had authored works under the same title. Biographers including Ibn al-Hanbali, Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, and Ibn al-'Imad al-Hanbali also credited the composition of an amatory maqāmah titled Lawat al-Shaki wa Damat al-Baki to Mansur ibn Abd al-Rahman.
The bibliographer Ilyan Sarkis noted that classical biographers of al-Safadi did not list this title among his confirmed writings. Manuscript witnesses present conflicting attributions as well: one manuscript bore the name of Ala' al-Din ibn Sharif al-Mardini; a copy dated 1229 AH in the Taymuriyya collection attributed it to Safi al-Din al-Hilli; and an early anonymous manuscript dating to the 8th century AH, acquired by Ahmad Pasha Taymur, contained no author's name.
Reception and Influence
The text served as a stylistic model for later writers. The Egyptian Shafi'i scholar Ahmad ibn Zayn al-Abidin al-Bakri (d. 1048 AH) composed his work Rawd al-Mushtaq wa-Bahjat al-Ushshaq explicitly following the literary method and style of Lawat al-Shaki wa Damat al-Baki.
Manuscripts and Publication
Manuscript copies of the work are preserved in several international libraries, including the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus, the Bankipore Khuda Bakhsh Library, and the Rasid Efendi Library. It was printed multiple times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including editions in Cairo (1280, 1302, 1307, 1331, and 1348 AH), Tunis (1280 AH), and Istanbul (1292 and 1301 AH).
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