This collection of articles by Professor Bosworth contains a series of studies on the Arab-Persian heartland of the medieval Islamic world, from the Levant to Afghanistan and the borderlands with India.

Contents: Preface; Madyan Shu'ayb in pre-Islamic and early Islamic lore and history; A note on ta'arrub in early Islam; Some remarks on the terminology of irrigation practices and hydraulic constructions in the eastern Arab and Iranian worlds in the third-fifth centuries A.H.; Abu Hafs 'Umar al-Kirmani and the rise of the Barmakids; Notes on the lives of some 'Abbasid princes and descendants; The concept of dhimma in early Islam; The 'Protected Peoples'(Christians and Jews) in medieval Egypt and Syria; Ghars al-Ni'ma [b.] Hilal al-Sabic's Kitab al-Hafawat an-nadira and Buyid history; Some historical gleanings from the section on symbolic actions in Qalqasndi's Subh al-a 'sa; Al-Khwarazmi on the secular and religious titles of the Byzantines and Christians; The Byzantine defence system in Asia Minor and the first Arab incursions; Byzantium and the Syrian frontier in the early Abbasid period; Byzantium and the Arabs: war and peace between two world civilisations; The city of Tarsus and the Arab-Byzantine frontier in early and middle 'Abbasid times; Abu 'Amr 'Uthman al Tarsusi's Siyar al-thughur and the last years of Arab rule in Tarsus (4th/10th century); The coming of Islam to Afghanistan; An 'Ayyar coin from Sistan; Al-Khwarazmi on various faiths and sects, chiefly Iranian; Rulers of Makran and Qusdar in the early Islamic period; The rulers of Chaghaniyan in early Islamic times; The poetical citations in Baihaqi's Ta'rikh-i Mas'udi; Farrukhi's elegy on Mahmud of Ghazna; An early Persian Sufi, Shaykh Abu Sa'id of Mayhanah; Index.