Arabian Hero

The heroic deeds and words of a warrior poet of northern Arabia An epic hero and a poet, the semi-legendary Shāyiʿ al-Amsaḥ was a prominent ancestor of the Shammar tribal confederation that stretches across the Great Nafūd desert in the northern Arabian Peninsula. Shāyiʿ’s corpus of extant poems are preserved in narratives about his chivalrous exploits transmitted orally for centuries. In this volume, Marcel Kurpershoek vividly translates the deeds and verses of this compelling poet, based on re