"Illuminates the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam, collating nearly two hundred and fifty translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than twenty international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history, provide detailed commentary and analysis on this diverse selection of material. Richly-illustrated with sixteen colour plates, fifteen maps, and over seventy in-text images, the volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date examination of what ancient sources had to say about the politics, culture, and religion of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period. It offers a full consideration of the traces which the Arabs have left in the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological records, and sheds light on their relationship with their often more-powerful neighbours: the states and empires of the ancient Near East. Arabs and Empires Before Islam gathers together a host of material never before collected into a single volume - some of which appears in English translation for the very first time - and provides a single point of reference for a vibrant and dynamic area of research"-- Publisher's Web site.

Arabs and empires before the sixth century / Michael C.A. Macdonald, with contributions from Aldo Corcella [and six others] -- Before Ḥimyar : epigraphic evidence for the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia / Christian Julien Robin -- Ḥimyar, Aksūm, and Arabia Deserta in late antiquity : the epigraphic evidence / Christian Julien Robin -- The archaeological evidence for the Jafnids and the Naṣrids / Denis Genequand -- Arabs in the conflict between Rome and Persia, 491-630 / Peter Edwell, with contributions from Greg Fisher [and three others] -- Arabs and Christianity / Greg Fisher and Philip Wood, with contributions from George Bevan [and four others] -- Provincia Arabia : Nabataea, the emergence of Arabic as a written language, and Graeco-Arabica / Zbigniew T. Fiema, Ahmad Al-Jallad, Michael C.A. Macdonald, and Laïla Nehmé -- Arabic and Persian sources for pre-Islamic Arabia / Harry Munt, with contributions from Touraj Daryaee [and three others].