Reprint of the original, first published in 1867.

The Assemblies has been regarded for eight centuries as the greatest treasure in Arabic literature after the Koran. It is the inner thread of this amazing book which makes it a world classic: the tales and events mirror the antics of the human mind on its way through life. The last chapter, where the "rascal," after all his experiences, settles down to a devout Sufi life, gives the clue to this fascinating textbook of traditional psychology.

The triple aim of Hamadhání in this work, first translated into English in 1915, appears to have been to amuse, to interest and to instruct; and this explains why, in spite of the inherent difficulty of a work of this kind composed primarily with a view to the rhetorical effect upon the learned and the great, there is scarcely a dull chapter in the fifty-one maqámát or discourses. The author essayed, throughout these dramatic discourses, to illustrate the life and language both of the denizens of the desert and the dwellers in towns, and to give examples of the jargon and slang of thieves and robbers as well as the lucubrations of the learned and the conversations of the cultured.