Ḥikāyat Abī al-Qāsim is a text enveloped in mystery. It exists, as I have already mentioned, in only one undated manuscript attributed to an otherwise unknown author and identifiable in no contemporary sources. The contents of the text are no less mysterious than the envelope, filled with difficult language, often nearly incomprehensible. For the moment, some of these unknown words and certain questions about the Ḥikāya's history and authorship must go largely unexplained. Some of the puzzles of its unique narrative style, however, are very gracefully explained in the introduction to the text, written by the mysterious author himself, who seems aware that his bizarre literary offering is bound to raise questions. And although he states his project quite plainly, the project itself is somewhat complex, so we should first attempt to unravel the author's own explanation of his text, thus introducing most of the problems addressed in this study. A full translation of this introduction is found at the beginning of Chapter 1, above.

One of the notable features of this text is its lack of chains of transmission (lists of sources cited in an anecdote), despite the fact that in many ways the Ḥikāya is a collection of quotations. But the entire work is attributed to al-Azdī, as if by a third person, at the beginning of the cursory ḥamdala (praise of God), constituting a kind of isnād (chain of transmission) for the entire text to follow. In his own voice, al-Azdī then begins his introduction by mentioning his sources, including poetry old and new, Bedouin speeches, and all of his personal experiences as an attendant of literary gatherings and a man of letters. Having thus briefly explained the ocean of quotations to follow, the author states, ‘Hādhihi ḥikāyatun 'an rajulin baghdādiyyin, kuntu u'āshiruhu burhatan min al-dahri’ (This is a ḥikāya of a Baghdadi man, whom I knew well for a time). In his article on the word aikāya in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Pellat states that aakā 'an can mean, in a chain of transmission, to relate word for word on the authority of someone.