The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature is 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. Guided by an international advisory editorial board, and compiled by leading scholars from the Middle East, Europe and America, 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 the nature of the Arabic language and the Arabic book; pre-Islamic literature; the Qur'an itself and the body of Hadith literature which records the traditions of the Prophet.
The many classes of literature that accompanied the Umayyad period are reviewed in detail, as are the influences of Greeks, Persians and Syrians on early Arabic literature.