Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Amm Mutwalli" and "Hagg Shalabi" / Mahmud Taymur -- The Arabian nights / translated by Husain Haddawy -- Badenheim 1939 / Aharon Appelfeld -- The blind owl / Sadiq Hidayat -- The book of Dede Korbut -- The book of Tahkemoni (Hebrew Maqamat) / Judah al-Harizi -- The broken wings / Kahlil Gibran -- Cities of salt / Abd al-Rahman Munif -- "The clockwork doll" and other poems / Dalia Ravikovitch -- The conference of the birds / Farid al-Din Attar -- Curfew / Adalet Agaoglu -- The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumram -- The divan of Hafiz / Hafiz -- The diwan of Abu Nuwas / Abu Nuwas -- The diwan of Judah Halevi / Judah Halevi -- The Epic of Gilgamesh -- The Gospel according to Matthew -- Hayy ibn Yaqzan / Ibn Tufayl -- Human landscapes from my country / Nazim Hikmet -- "In the city of slaughter" / Hayyim Nahman Bialik -- "Introduction to the history of the petty kings" / Adunis -- Kalilah and Dimnah / translated by Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa -- "Khusraw and Shirin" / Nizami of Ganja -- The king is the king / Sadallah Wannus -- Leyla and Mejnun / Fuzuli -- Maqamat / al-Hamadhani -- "The mechanical doll" and other poems / Furugh Farrukhzad -- Memed, my hawk / Yasar Kemal -- Men in the sun / Ghassan Kanafani -- Miramar / Najib Mahfuz -- Mr. Mani / A.B. Yehoshua -- Murder in Baghdad / Salah Abd al-Sabur -- My Michael / Amos Oz -- My name is Red / Orhan Pamuk -- The mystical poetry of Yunus Emre / Yunus Emre -- "Ode on the conquest of Amorium" / Abu Tammam -- "Ode of the reconquest of al-Hadath" / al-Mutanabbi -- Once upon a time / Muhammad Ali Jamalzadah -- Only yesterday / Shmuel Yosef Agnon -- Ottoman lyric poetry: "Those tulip-cheeked ones" and Row by row" / Necati and Baki -- Plagued by the West (Gharbzadigi) / Jalal Al-i Ahmad -- The Quran (Koran) --Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam / Omar Khayyam --Savushun (A Persian requiem) / Simin Danishvar -- The secret life of Saeed the ill-fated pessoptimist / Emile Habiby -- "The secret shrine" and "The frog prayer" / Omer Seyfettin -- See under: Love / David Grossman -- Shahnamah, or The book of kings / Abu al-Qasim Firdawsi --Songs of the Land of Zion, Jerusalem / Yehuda Amichai -- The spiritual couplets / Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi Rumi -- "Stop and we will weep: The Muallaqah" / Imru al-Qays -- The story of Zahra / Hanan al-Shaykh -- The Talmud -- The Torah.