A book of adab, a term understood in modern times to specifically mean literature but in earlier times its meaning included all that a well-informed person had to know in order to pass in society as a cultured and refined individual.
The translator Issa J. Boullata is a literary critic and scholar, who also writes fiction. Formerly Professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, he has published several books, including Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (1990) and a novel in Arabic, Homecoming to Jerusalem (1998), in addition to numerous studies of Arabic literature, book reviews, short stories in English, and translations of Arabic poetry and novels.
