Poetry & History: The Value of Poetry in Reconstructing Arab History

​​​This is a collection of papers presented at a 2008 conference sponsored by the American University of Beirut’s Sheikh Zayid bin Sultan Chair of Islamic Studies of the Center for Arab and Middle Easte
Studies and the Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett Chair of Arabic of the Department of Arabic and Near Easte
Languages. The volume includes sixteen articles by scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Lebanon, and is divided into two parts: the first dealing with classical and premode
poetry, and the second with mode
and contemporary poetry, with three articles focusing on the work of the poet Mahmoud Darwish. It serves to better illuminate some aspects of the relationship between the fields of poetry and history, and represents a significant contribution to the field of Arabic and Middle Easte
Studies.