With contributions from specialists in different areas of classical Islamic thought, this accessible volume explores the ways in which medieval Muslims saw, interpreted and represented the world around them in their writings.

Focusing mainly on the eighth to tenth centuries AD, known as the 'formative period of Islamic thought', the book examines historiography, literary prose and Arabic prose genres which do not fall neatly into either category.

Filling a gap in the literature by providing detailed discussions of both primary texts and recent scholarship, Writing and...

Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few surviving texts by the prolific Baghdadi scholar Ibn al-Sa'i, who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city in the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the...