Everyday Life in Medieval Baghdad

Entertaining, instructive, licentious and sometimes abhorrent, Tanukhi's wonderful collection of anecdotes presents a rich and colourful mosaic of life and belief in the tenth-century Middle East.

Stories of court life, money, torture, swindles, sex, dreams and disease, combine the comic with the sinister and bizarre. Always entertaining, and told with wit and eloquence, the result is a wonderful first-person account of everyday life in medieval Baghdad and its surroundings. This two volume set includes translations of sections of Tankukhi's manuscript that only came to light at a later date and which are both little known and rare. This unique set contains a new introduction by one of the leading scholars of the Middle East, Robert Irwin.