The object of this collection of essays is to present various approaches to the evolution of Arabic prose in the Abbasid age when the art of writing reached the climax of artificiality under the influence of several cultural factors.

While poetry always had the virtue of being the essence of verbal arts among Arabs, prose, for a long time, maintained its role as a major vehicle for transmitting information, presenting historical or scientific material or elaborating theological issues. However, as time passed during the Abbasid age, with all the social and cultural changes it involved, prose was gaining merits similar to those that poetry manipulated in Arabic literature for centuries.

The essays focus on types of prose in Arabic literature which evidently demonstrate certain artistic features that can be classified within the framework of rhetoric. This applies to both form and theme. In this volume, the editors are interested in presenting some aspects that pertain to the evolution and the progress of artistic prose, not only as a transmitter of knowledge and information, but also as a genre which was chosen and seen, intentionally, by the authors as a means for achieving a specific purpose through specific stylistic and thematic effects.

Vahid Behmardi teaches Arabic and Persian literature at the Lebanese American University in Beirut where he directs the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature. His fields of interest include Abbasid Literature and Islamic Mysticism.

Lale Behzadi teaches Arabic literature and Islamic history at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Her fields of interest include the history of rhetoric and interdisciplinary hermeneutics.