The Maqama of Saymara (al-Maqama al-Saymariyya) is often regarded as a maqama of “anomaly.” In this particular maqama, Badi' al-zaman al-Hamadhani did not summon his fictitious hero Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari. Even the usual isnad ('Isa ibn Hisham related to us and said) is awkwardly followed by a second one (Said Abu al-'Anbas al-Saymari). Therefore both the narrator and the hero are the same al-Saymari (213-75/828-88), the court jester of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil and also a renowned faqih, astrologer, oneiromancer, poet, and belle-lettrist. Another “anomaly” of this maqama is the combination of saj' (rhymed prose) and prose, rather than the saj'-poetry alternation that is attested in the majority of the Hamadhanian maqamat. As Julia Bray notes in an article published in 1998, the Maqama of Saymara contains seven consecutive plots enclosed in a moralizing frame. The stylistic feature, i.e., the mixture of saj' and prose, echoes the coexistence of simple and complicated plots, and could betray al-Hamadhani’s technique of “working up a prose sketch into saj'.” In this paper, we will provide some justifications on the Saymara maqama’s “anomalies.” It is known that a usual Hamadhanian maqama consists of a single episode in the beggar hero’s life. If we gather together these snapshots, a fuller image of al-Iskandari appears and the audience/reader can find an array of virtues (sg. fadl) that are hidden in the maqama’s theme of beggary. With his eloquence and ruses, al-Saymari bears a strong resemblance to al-Iskandari. The seven episodes of the Saymara maqama also contain the virtues that can be located in the usual Hamadhanian maqamat. The length of the Saymara maqama, as well as the “the lapse from saj' into prose,” suggests that we can divide this particular maqama into several stories that are united by an identical isnad. Our analysis of this maqama also reminds us to reexamine the maqama’s connections to biography, picaresque novel, and even the qasida genre.