Introductory Summary

The Conquest of Andalusia | The Battle of Poitiers | The Caliph's Sister

The Caliph's Heirs | Saladin and the Assassins

About the Novel | The Historical Context | The Translator | Afterword | Study Guide

The Afterword

In his Afterword, Professor Roger Allen assesses Jurji Zaidan’s role in the development of the Arabic historical novel. He writes: “Within the context of any study of historical approaches to the development of the novel genre in Arabic, the central role that Jurji Zaidan played in the early phases of that lengthy process clearly needs to be revisited and indeed revised, as part of a widespread scholarly re-evaluation of the cultural movement in the 19th century that has been underway for the past decade or so.”