The Vagaries of the Qasidah by J. E. Montgomery
Part 1 of the Gibb Memorial Trust Arabic Studies series
A study of the tradition and practice of early Arabic poetry, this book provides an investigation of the multiple versions of early poems that exist in various Abbasid collections. It offers a corrective to the more exaggerated claims concerning this poetry and revises some hitherto fundamental attitudes by advancing an individual philologically-driven vision of the period.