James E. Montgomery is The Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at Fellow of Trinity Hall, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge.

• Prefatory Note; Prologue Five Assumptions; 1 Alqamah's Petition for the Release of his Brother Shas; 2 Love's 'Wonderful Workynge'; 3 Marital Bliss and Acrimonious Divorce; 4 The Bull Oryx; 5 An Arab at Sea: A Poem by Bishr b. Abi Khazim al-Asadi; 6 Poetry in the Early Islamic Period; Epilogue A Manifesto; Bibliography; Indices.