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Night & Horses & The Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature, by Robert Irwin. 462 pages, bibliography, index. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999. £25.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-71-399153-4

Like his earlier The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Penguin, 1997), Irwin's latest work is both learned and useful. Irwin points out in the introduction that it is the first work of its kind. Previous anthologies treat topics ranging from sectarian polemic and the law to the history of the caliphate. Irwin is more single-minded: Night & Horses & the Desert is devoted entirely to the (still broad) field of adab, that is, the literary production of the Arabic-writing intelligentsia of the Near East, North Africa, and Islamic Spain from the fifth to the sixteenth century CE. It is an excellent introduction to the subject. Night & Horses & the Desert consists of seven chapters, organized more or less chronologically. The first concerns the 'pagan' poets of pre-Islamic Arabia. Irwin takes the useful step of comparing translations of Imru' al-Qays' "Mu'allaqa," thus underscoring his earlier comments (pp. vii-ix) regarding the risks inherent in translating Arabic poetry. He follows with a brief chapter on the Qur'an. While Irwin identifies its profound influence upon Arabic writing (to the modern period), he might have done more to illustrate the point in the rest of his commentary. Three subsequent chapters trace the emergence of adab into the late twelfth century. Among the book's virtues is to introduce new readers of Arabic literature to a range of authors, many well-known to scholars of Islamic history, others more obscure but, as Irwin teaches us, worthy of attention. In Chapter Four ("Widening Horizons"), on the crucial period from 750 to 900, Irwin includes selections from Ibn al-Muqaffa' and al-Jahiz. He provides, as he should, given the author's range of interests and output, long extracts from several texts by alJahiz. Similarly, in Chapter Five ("The Wandering Scholars"), he includes material from al-Tanukhi (among other worthies); Irwin is perhaps misleading in treating his works as wholly 'literary,' however, since there is much in al-Tanukhi's writings for socio-political historians as well. But Irwin also includes, for example, a selection of Shu'ubi polemic by the less well-known Nabataean writer, Ibn Wahshiyya (here rendered, in one of many transliteration errors, as Ibn Washsiyya). The penultimate chapter, on the Andalusian literati and their work, sheds light on the close intellectual and cultural ties joining the Islamic West to the Near Eastern 'heartland.' The final chapter treats material dating to the "late medieval" period. One is not surprised to find that Irwin includes extended extracts from The 1001 Nights.