A study of the tradition and practice of early Arabic poetry, this book provides an investigation of the multiple versions of early poems that exist in various Abbasid collections. It offers a corrective to the more exaggerated claims concerning this poetry and revises some hitherto fundamental attitudes by advancing an individual philologically-driven vision of the period.

James E. Montgomery is The Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at Fellow of Trinity Hall, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge.