Abū Muhammad al-Qāsim ibn Alī ibn Muhammad ibn Uthmān al-Harīrī, popularly known as al-Hariri of Basra was an Arab poet, scholar of the Arabic language and a high government official of the Seljuks.
He is known for his Maqamat al-Hariri, a collection of some 50 stories written in the Maqama style, a mix of verse and literary prose. For more than eight centuries, Al-Hariri's best known work, his Maqamat has been regarded as the greatest treasure in Arabic literature after the Koran. Although the maqamat did not originate with al-Hariri, he elevated the genre to an art form.