A Literary History of the Arabs

About this book

This history traces Arabic literature from the poets of the pre-Islamic desert, with their odes of love, war and the deserted encampment, through the Qur'an and the rise of Islam, the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, the golden age of Baghdad with its poets, grammarians, historians and philosophers, the culture of Muslim Spain, and the centuries that followed. Nicholson quotes and translates widely, from Imru' al-Qays and al-Mutanabbi to al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun, always connecting literature with religion and politics.

Context and significance

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868–1945), a Cambridge scholar of Arabic and Persian, published the book in 1907, and for most of the twentieth century it was the standard introduction in English to Arabic literature, still praised for its learning and its sympathy. Read his The Mystics of Islam and O'Leary's Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.

About the author