This book is a chronological study of the history of Arabic literature. Beginning with a brief discourse on geographical and cultural influences on Arabic writers, and touching on the earliest forms of pre-Islamic poetry, the author continues with a deeper study of the 'golden age' of Arabic literature, when writers and artists flourished under the Omeyyad and Abbasid dynasties. Later chapters are devoted to the medieval period, and a final section looks to the future. First published in 1903, this work remains a standard, concise history of Arabic literature. Its author, Clement Huart, Professor of Oriental Languages in Paris, was one of the most accomplished orientalists of his day, and was a leading authority on Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Romaic literature.

Clement Huart (1854-1926) studied Middle Eastern languages and served as a French diplomat for twenty years before becoming Professor of Persian at the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris. This two-volume French translation (1918-22), published as part of a larger series on Islamic hagiography, focuses on the medieval founders of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes, whose main centre, Konya, Huart had visited twenty years earlier. The fourteenth-century Persian text is preserved in several manuscripts, and Huart's translation follows an early seventeenth-century manuscript from his private collection. Huart regards the text as providing evidence primarily about the intellectual and moral contexts of the origins of the dervishes' mystical movement rather than about strict historical facts, but also points to the relevance of its treatment of dreams, prophecies, apparitions and paranormal phenomena to modern researchers of hypnosis and psychosis. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes.

Clement Huart (1854-1926) studied Middle Eastern languages and served as a French diplomat for twenty years before becoming Professor of Persian at the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris. This two-volume French translation (1918-22), published as part of a larger series on Islamic hagiography, focuses on the medieval founders of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes, whose main centre, Konya, Huart had visited twenty years earlier. The fourteenth-century Persian text is preserved in several manuscripts, and Huart's translation follows an early seventeenth-century manuscript from his private collection. Huart regards the text as providing evidence primarily about the intellectual and moral contexts of the origins of the dervishes' mystical movement rather than about strict historical facts, but also points to the relevance of its treatment of dreams, prophecies, apparitions and paranormal phenomena to modern researchers of hypnosis and psychosis. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes.

Cl ment Huart (1854 1926) graduated in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Modern Greek and served as a French diplomat in Istanbul (or, as he called it, Constantinople) for twenty years before becoming Professor of Persian at the Ecole des Langues Orientales in Paris. He edited and translated many oriental texts and published widely on Middle-Eastern cultures. This 1897 publication describes a visit to Konya, where Huart hoped to find out more about the capital of the Seljuk Empire than was recorded in Byzantine or Persian sources. Travelling on horseback from Istanbul, Huart noted his impressions of archaeological sites and historic buildings, and recorded details of many inscriptions from the Seljuk period on mosques, mausoleums, caravanserais and fortresses. He also met the whirling dervishes. His fascinating account of his experiences is interwoven with references to medieval battles and Islamic legends, together with advice for future travellers to this rapidly modernising region.