ABSTRACT
Those who have persevered with this study believing that it would provide them with a précis of the Kitāb al-aghānī and free them of the need to turn to the book itself will, I hope, have been disappointed. It was not my intention to produce a substitute for Abū l-Faraj’s work. Instead, I wanted to shed light on how he had put his book together, so that readers would understand better the nature of this complex text and thus derive more profit and pleasure from it. And at the same time I assembled in a kind of Companion what seems to me relevant information for readers to draw on when they open the Aghānī.
