This book, first published in 1970, provides a description of the standard Arabic language used today as the universal means of written communication throughout the Arab world and in formal spoken communication (vernaculars differ both from each other and from the standard language). The principal emphasis is on syntax and morphology of which there exists no comprehensive account. Phonology and lexicon are treated briefly and there is a chapter on the script.

This book, first published in 1970, provides a description of the standard Arabic language used today as the universal means of written communication throughout the Arab world and in formal spoken communication (vernaculars differ both from each other and from the standard language). The principal emphasis is on syntax and morphology of which there exists no comprehensive account. Phonology and lexicon are treated briefly and there is a chapter on the script.

Originally published in 1983, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature was the first general survey of the field to have been published in English for over fifty years and the first attempted in such detail in a multi-volume form. The volumes of the History provide an invaluable source of reference and understanding of the intellectual, literary and religious heritage of the Arabic-speaking and Islamic world. This volume begins its coverage with the oral verse of the sixth century AD, and ends with the fall of the Umayyad dynasty two centuries later. Within this period fall major events: the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the founding of the Islamic religion, the great Arab Islamic conquests of territories outside the Arabian Peninsula, and their meeting, as overlords, with the Byzantine and Sasanian world. Contributors to this volume discuss an array of topics including the influences of Greeks, Persians and Syrians on early Arabic literature.

Contributors to this volume, which ranges from the sixth century A.D. to the fall of the Umayyad dynasty two centuries later, discuss the nature of the Arabic language and the Arabic book; pre-Islamic literature; the Qur'an itself; the body of Hadith literature that records the traditions of the Prophet.

Professor Beeston's Written Arabic is designed primarily to bring research students and others quickly to a reading knowledge of modern Arabic in order to use Arabic source materials. Because Arabic has a very specialised vocabulary Written Arabic contains comparatively little exercise material within the text. Instead Professor Beeston is providing accompanying booklets of Arabic exercise material in specific major fields - history, economics and sociology - so that students can begin immediately to learn the vocabulary and style of Arabic in their own field of interest. Arabic Historical Phraseology contains exercise material taken from historical writing in modern Arabic and is related directly to the chapters of Written Arabic.

Provides for a sound understanding of abstract literature on scholarly subjects. Excludes the mass of linguistic detail contained in traditional Arabic grammars.