Excerpt from A Literary History of the Arabs The term 'Literary History' may be interpreted in such different ways that an author who uses it is bound to explain at the outset what particular sense he has attached to it. When Mr. Fisher Unwin asked me to contribute a volume on the Arabs to this Series, I accepted his proposal with alacrity, not only because I welcomed the opportunity of making myself better acquainted with Arabic history and literature, but also and more especially in the hope that I might be able to compile a work which should serve as a general introduction to the subject, and which should neither be too popular for students nor too scientific for ordinary readers. Its precise character was determined partly by my own predilections and partly by the conditions of time and space under which it had to be produced. To write a critical account of Arabic literature was out of the question. Brockelmann's invaluable work, which contains over a thousand closely-printed pages, is confined to biography and bibliography, and does not deal with the historical development of ideas. This, however, seems to me the really vital aspect of literary history. It has been my chief aim to sketch in broad outlines what the Arabs thought, and to indicate as far as possible the influences which moulded their thought. I am well aware that the picture is sadly incomplete, that it is full of gaps and blanks admitting of no disguise or apology; but I hope that, taken as a whole, it is not unlike. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.