ABSTRACT
It is with great pleasure that I stand here today to address this distinguished group of scholars who are all involved in the study of varied aspects of the history and technique of Arabic literature. Scholarship in Arabic literature is branching rapidly, and is becoming more sophisticated with the years as modern critical criteria are applied to it. There is no doubt that the last three decades have produced an admirable number of scholars, both in the Arab world and in the West, who are radically expanding the discipline by painstaking exploration into the background, characteristics and cultural attributes of the old literature; and such exploration will go further and deeper as increasing numbers of scholars are drawn constructively towards a deeper awareness of the original gift Arabic literature has offered to world literature in its long and extremely rich history.
