This book presents a bilingual edition and study of an anonymous work of early Arabic fiction set in pre-Islamic times: an Arab maiden called 'Layla the Chaste' is kidnapped and threatened with forced marriage to a Persian king. Ultimately, she is saved by her handsome and beloved cousin al-Barraq, and they marry and live happily ever after. This knight-in-shining-armour-rescues-damsel-in-distress narrative, which combines elements of the Arabic popular epic (sira) with others from the ?Udhri love story and the western fairy tale, was misinterpreted as history by scholars in the 19th...