Bilal Orfali is Sheikh Zayed Chair for Arabic and Islamic Studies and Chairperson of the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages at the American University of Beirut. He previously held the M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies at Ohio State University. He specializes in Arabic literature, Sufism, and quranic Studies.Nadia Maria El Cheikh is Professor of History and Dean of Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut. She is a scholar of the Abbasid Caliphate and Byzantium, with women and gender as a focal point of her research.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesNotes on ContributorsPart 1 Compilation, Authorship, and Readership1 The ʿIqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih: The Birth of a ClassicIsabel Toral2 “I Begin with the Kings:” Contextualizing Knowledge in Ibn Bassām’s al-DhakhīraEnass Khansa3 Towards a Reconstruction of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī’s K. Abyāt al-maʿānīDavid Larsen4 A House in Words: Al-Ghuzūlī as Author’s AlternateBoutheina KhaldiPart 2 Pleasure5 Diagramming the Bedroom Sciences in ʿAlī ibn Naṣr al-Kātib’s Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdhaJeremy Kurzyniec6 Reflections on Song, Manuscript #144 and the Social Life of Kunnāsh al-Ḥāʾik: A Study in Social CodicologyCarl DavilaPart 3 Religion and Education7 Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894) on Death and DyingLyall Armstrong8 Educating for the Sake of Equilibrium: Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 276/889) ʿUyūn al-akhbār as an Intellectual Tool for Moderating “Religion” and PietyHans-Peter Pökel9 Quranic Exegesis as Poetry Anthology: Heavenly Wine in the Exegesis and Fictive Maqāmas of Ibn Nāqiyā (d. 485/1092)Matthew L. KeeganPart 4 Geography10 The Faḍāʾil of Jerusalem Books as AnthologiesSuleiman A. Mourad11 Ideological Dimensions of Geographical Anthologies: The Case of ʿUmāra al-Yamanī (d. 569/1174) in the Kharīdat al-qaṣr*Nathaniel A. MillerIndex