This volume discusses Mamluk historical texts with an emphasis on literary/stylistic analysis, basically ignoring issues of ''factuality'' versus ''fictivity''. None of the authors set out to write ''fiction''; nor would their audience have received their accounts as such. The events depicted were a matter of historical record; but their meaning was geared both to contemporary and to general concerns. The fact of telling them is part and parcel of the historian''s task; the means of telling them has to do with the historian''s choice of style; and style is all-important in conveying meaning. Were these accounts not considered ''true'', the purpose behind their telling and the meaning they convey, would, arguably, be lost; but were they not told in the most effective manner, their meaning might not be clearly grasped.

This volume discusses Mamluk historical texts with an emphasis on literary/stylistic analysis, basically ignoring issues of ''factuality'' versus ''fictivity''. None of the authors set out to write ''fiction''; nor would their audience have received their accounts as such. The events depicted were a matter of historical record; but their meaning was geared both to contemporary and to general concerns. The fact of telling them is part and parcel of the historian''s task; the means of telling them has to do with the historian''s choice of style; and style is all-important in conveying meaning. Were these accounts not considered ''true'', the purpose behind their telling and the meaning they convey, would, arguably, be lost; but were they not told in the most effective manner, their meaning might not be clearly grasped.