Oral poetry and narratives from central Arabia

The Story of a Desert Knight is the second volume of a trilogy entitled Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia. It is devoted to the narratives told about and the poems composed by Slewih al-Atawi and his brother Bxit, both famous desert knights in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century. The principal source of this book is Slewih's great-grandson Xalid, a sheikh of the Utaybah tribe. The introduction discusses inter alia the general characteristics of Bedouin oral culture, the linguistic, prosodic and stylistic features of the text, and Xalid's use of his ancestors' oral legacy in order to enhance his position in the tribal hierarchy of prestige. In addition to the translation of the oral text this volume offers a complete transcription, based on taped records and including variants found in published Saudi sources, and a substantial glossary.