Foreword; The Transcription Of Arabic; Part I: Fact Finding; 1. Arabic Literatures, "Elite" and "Folk" - Junctions and Disjunctions; 2. The Egyptian Mawwal: its Ancestry, its Development, and its Present Forms; 3. The Nahda's first stirrings of interest in Alf Layla; 4. The Career of Mustafa Ibrahim 'Ajaj; Part II: Texts; 5. The Prophet's Shirt: three Versions of an Egyptian Narrative Ballad; 6. An Uncommon Use of Nonsense Verse in Colloquial Arabic; 7. An Early Example of Narrative Verse in Colloquial Arabic; 8. An Incomplete Egyptian Ballad on the 1956 War; 9. Three Versions of an Egyptian Narrative Ballad; 10. Pulp Stories in the Repertoire of Egyptian Folk Singers; 11. Karam il-Yatim; 12. Of Loose Verse and Masculine Beauty; 13. A Zajal on the Mi

The character and range of Arab folk literature are investigated by Pierre Cachia in this collection of his pioneering essays in the field.