This famous survey has been updated to incorporate the new perspectives of the last twelve years. The study opens with one Revolution, the Reformation, and closes with another - the Civil War of the mid-17th century and the abolition of the monarchy. Alan Smith explores the dramatic changes during this period when the country was forged into a 'nation state." Its centrepiece however, remains the extraordinary achievements of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age, and these glories are given full treatment in this masterly account.

This famous survey has been updated to incorporate the new perspectives of the last twelve years. The study opens with one Revolution, the Reformation, and closes with another - the Civil War of the mid-17th century and the abolition of the monarchy. Alan Smith explores the dramatic changes during this period when the country was forged into a '`nation state." Its centrepiece however, remains the extraordinary achievements of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age, and these glories are given full treatment in this masterly account.

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.

The author's talents spanned many disciplines and this is a collection of works on agriculture, animals, astrology, astronomy, biography, calendars, crops, genealogies, geography, grammar, lexicography, mathematics, medicine, taxes, timekeeping, warfare and weapons. It is reproduced here in facsimile with descriptions of the contents and an introduction and index by the editors. Arabic text.

This chronicle is the fullest and best historical source for the conquest of Yemen to the end of the 13th century. In two volumes: Vol. I contains a critical edition of the Arabic text of Kitab al-Simt al-Ghali al-Thaman fi Akhbar al-Muluk min al-Ghuzz bi'l-Yaman, Badr al-Din Muhammad b. Hatim al-Yami al-Hamdani, Vol. II is a study of Ibn Hatim's Kitab al-Simt. Muhammad b. Hatim's chronicle, which has not been published previously, is the fullest and best historical source on Yemen for the period it covers, from the conquest of Yemen by Saladin's brother Turanshah to the author's own time, by which the Rasulids, who had come to the country as followers of the Ayyubids, had replaced their old masters as its rulers. Ibn Hatim himself came from an Isma'ili tribe of the region of San'a. From the middle of the 13th century he often gives his own account of events and he soon became one of a group of leading Amirs involved in the management of affairs for the Rasulid Sultan al-Muzaffar and thus well informed of the political situation. His book was begun in 1295. Vol. I contains the text of the Kitab al-Simt, edited on the basis of the three known manuscripts. Vol. II includes studies of the author and his work, and of aspects of the Yemeni history of the period, as well as a glossary, geographical and tribal indices and maps. G. Rex Smith was Professor of Arabic in the University of Manchester with numerous publications on the Yemen.