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Some thirty years have passed since the original publication of M. M. Ahsan's Social Life Under the Abbasids, but it remains an invaluable resource for the study of the material culture of Abbasid life in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Ahsan arranges his material thematically-costume, food, housing, hunting, indoor and outdoor games, and festivities and festivals. Moreover, that arrangement together with the eclectic mix of citations, also give readers a taste of what it is like to browse through the many kinds of adab works that are Ahsan's main sources, including, among numerous others, anecdotal, biographical, culinary, geographical and literary texts.
M. Manazir Ahsan received his PhD in Middle Eastern History from SOAS University of London in 1972. In 1980 he founded the Muslim World Book Review, of which he is still Editor. He was Director-General of the Islamic Foundation from 1985 to 2010. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of the Markfield Institute of Higher Education.
Julia Bray is Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at St John's College.
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