He is not sufficient for you in the extremities of the earth and the moving heavens except by His inspiration and will, nor does any speaker in the corners of the horizons speak except by His inspiration and favor. One who acknowledges the deficiency of his understanding and the weakness of his intellect, He guided him by His mercy and success to acquire some of the sciences and arts. And thank Him with the thanks of one who was stumbling in the darkness of ignorance, and He brought him out by His compassion and support to the expanse of guidance and the light of discernment, until he knew the certain truth from the falsehoods of conjecture. Then I implore Him, the Most High, by His sent prophets and His close saints, each of whom is like a blaze on the forehead of time and a crown on the head of eternity. And I ask Him with trepidation that He not distance me from His guided servants, upon whom He bestowed favor, not those who are astray or have incurred His wrath. Indeed, He is capable of all things and worthy of answering this prayer. To proceed: When God favored the human race over all other creations with the benefits of understanding, and distinguished the children of Adam from among the animal species with the honor of speech, He sent among every nation one who would be known and famous in his time for the foundations of eloquence and the derivation of the rulings of their law. And he would become a leader and a constitution for the one who followed the path of eloquence. So, he who became famous for this among mankind and became the one referred to in this matter among the Muslims is the author of the famous Maqamat, Al-Hariri, who is Sheikh Al-Imam Abu Muhammad Al-Qasim bin Ali bin Muhammad bin Uthman Al-Basri, who belittled those who preceded him among the men of letters and the eloquent, and exhausted those who came after him among the commoners and the less eloquent. When I saw that his aforementioned book has remained popular to this day for the science of literature, considered by the elite and the commoners as the centerpiece of their knowledge and the essence of their critique, and they consider its light as the lamp of their enlightenment and the radiance of their morning, nay, no one among them doubts that it is the flowers of his garden and the traces of his paradise, the purity of his water and the breeze of his air, I wished to explain it with a moderate explanation.