Like other non-literate peoples, the Bedouin have a strong oral tradition and use poetry for all forms of communication and entertainment. The author has spent 20 years studying the Bedouin of Sinai and the Negev and their poetry, and this book presents the fruit of his work.

Poems of expression; communication; instruction; poems to entertain; episodes in poetry 1 - poems from the war of Zaric al-Huzayyil (1875-1887); episodes in poetry 2 - poems sent from and to the Sinai Smuggler-poet Anez Abu Salim during his prison term (1962-1970); poems on the margin of historic events (1882-1962); composing Bedouin poetry - a cultural document for the ages.

`Bailey's collection is the fruit of twenty years of fieldwork and is of great richness. There is excellent documentation on bedouin life, customs, the social and political scene, recorded at first hand but with reference to relevant literature ... To read through Bedouin Poetry is to enter into the heart and mind, joys and sorrows of a bedouin society through the greatest of thier arts - that of verse. Clinton Bailey's study of them through this medium is no mean achievement.' Journal of Arabic Literature, XXXIV (1993)

`Bailey's collection is the fruit of twenty years of fieldwork and is of great richness. There is excellent documentation on bedouin life, customs, the social and political scene, recorded at first hand but with reference to relevant literature ... To read through Bedouin Poetry is to enter into the heart and mind, joys and sorrows of a bedouin society through the greatest of thier arts - that of verse. Clinton Bailey's study of them through this medium is no mean achievement.' Journal of Arabic Literature, XXXIV (1993) `quite wonderful poetry ... so admirably presented and translated by the author in a very handsome book by the Clarendon Press at its best.' Times Literary Supplement `a fascinating collection of Bedouin poetry, making available over a hundred poems spoken in the voices of the Bedouin out of the rich resources of their oral tradition. Clinton Bailey is to be commended for undertaking and bringing to fruition this valuable research project.' Times Literary Supplement `The poetry would have disappeared for sure, like the tents. Bailey has done work for many generations to come'. Isabel Kershner, The Jerusalem Report. 'Here we have a major hoard of Bedouin oral poetry.' Inea Bushnaq, Journal of Palestine Studies 'Viewed from the perspective of Bailey's own extensive involvement with research on Bedouin themes, the book under review is without doubt the author's magnum opus, assembling in one place the fruit of some 20 years of assiduous fieldwork carried out among tent-dwelling Bedouins in Sinai and the Negev ... a distinguished contribution to a field that has been attracting increasing attention among Arabists during the last decade ... deserves to find its place on the bookshelves of all admirers of Bedouin culture.' Alexander Borg, Ben-Gurion University, Ariel, Number 96, 1994 `The present work is well presented and very comprehensive, and it is good to have such a solid collection of poems to add to the growing corpus of works on Bedouin and Arabian oral literature.' Bulletin of the SOAS