Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems

Music of a Distant Drum marks a literary milestone. It collects 129 poems from the four leading literary traditions of the Middle East, all masterfully translated into English by Bernard Lewis, many for the first time. These poems come from diverse languages and traditions—Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew—and span more than a thousand years. Together they provide a fascinating and unusual window into Middle Eastern history. Lewis, one of the world's greatest authorities on the region's ...