Question
Michael Cooperson imitated a form of wordplay called badī‘ by translating a collection from this language into Singlish and management speak. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this language of the Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī and other stories in saj‘ rhyming prose. The One Thousand and One Nights largely comprises stories in this language’s “Classical” form.
ANSWER: Arabic [or al-‘arabiyya] (Among the linguistic stunts of badī‘ in the Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī are palindromic lines and lines without dotted letters, which make up over half the Arabic script.)
[10h] Richard Burton’s essay on the saj‘ of the Nights highlights a basic unit in Arabic prosody named for these objects. Al-Khalīl likened the poetic line to one of these things supported by feet made of asbāb and awtād.
ANSWER: tents [or houses; accept bayt] (Asbāb and awtād are “pegs” and “cords,” respectively.)
[10m] A noted use of saj‘ is a story from Sa‘dī’s Gulistān in which this man tells his son to insult the mother of a man who insulted him. This man receives a chest containing a woman’s body in the story of “The Three Apples.”
ANSWER: Hārūn ar-Rāshīd [or Hārūn al-Rāshīd; or Abū Jaʿfar Hārūn ibn Muḥammad ar-Rāshīd; accept translations like Hārūn the Just or Aaron the Rightly-Guided]
<World Literature>
Summary
| 2025 ACF Nationals | 04/19/2025 | Y | 24 | 12.08 | 92% | 21% | 8% |
Data
| Johns Hopkins | Chicago B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Columbia A | WUSTL A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Georgia State | Arizona State | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Virginia Tech | Georgia Tech | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Indiana | Waterloo A | 10 | 10 | 10 | 30 |
| Cornell A | MIT | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Maryland | Illinois B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Michigan | Columbia B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| LSE | NYU | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| North Carolina A | Illinois A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Ohio State | Virginia | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Florida | Ottawa | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Penn State | UC Berkeley B | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Vanderbilt | RIT | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Stanford | Rutgers | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Texas | Minnesota | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Toronto A | Northwestern | 10 | 10 | 0 | 20 |
| Iowa State | Toronto B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Harvard | Toronto C | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| UC Berkeley A | Chicago A | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| North Carolina B | UCF | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Waterloo B | WUSTL B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Winona State | Cornell B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Yale | British Columbia | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |