Even before Islam, poetry was at the heart of Arabic culture. It spread and developed wherever the Arabic language came to be spoken, from Damascus to Fez, Baghdad to Cairo as well as in the Arabian heartland. This book takes us on a poetic journey through the Classical age of Arabic poetry, from about the year 600 AD to about 1000 AD. Poignant images of solitude, impossible love and the austere beauty of the desert pervade Arabic poetry from its beginnings, even when the poet lived in an urbane, courtly milieu. There are mystical poems, and blasphemous ones; war poems, political ones; satires, joke poems and overwrought if ingenious nature poems.