4to. 411 / 583 / 507 / 532 / 522 / 478 / 296 pp., Arabic text within borders, later roan-backed cloth binding, lightly rubbed mainly at spine extremities, gilt lettering on raised spines, edited by Ahmad Amin, Ahmad Al-Zein and Ibrahim Al-Abyari, index, occasional light foxing, cover of volume 1 lightly soiled, otherwise set in very good condition, Matba'at al-Ta'lif wa'l-Tarjamah wa'l-Nashr, Cairo, second edition, 1948-53.

Synopsis

Al-’Iqd al-Farid (The Unique Necklace), is one of the classics of Arabic literature. Compiled in several volumes by an Andalusian scholar and poet named Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (246–328 H. / 860–940 C.E.), it remains a mine of information about various elements of Arab culture and letters during the four centuries before his death. Essentially it is 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 be considered in society as a cultured and refined individual. This meaning later evolved and included belles lettres in the form of elegant prose and verse that was as much entertaining as it was morally ducational, such as poetry, pleasant anecdotes, proverbs, historical accounts, general knowledge, wise maxims, and even practical philosophy.
Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih’s imagination and organisation saved his encyclopaedic compendium from easily being a chaotic jumble of materials by conceiving it as a necklace composed of twenty-five ‘books’, each of which carried the name of a jewel.
Each of the twenty-five parts was organised around a major theme and had an introduction written by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, followed by his relevant
adab selections of verse and prose on the theme of the ‘book’. He drew on a vast repertoire of sources including the Bible, the Qur’an, and the
Hadith, and the works of al-Jahiz, Ibn Qutayba, al-Mubarrad, Abu ‘Ubayda ibn al-Muthanna and several others, and the diwans of many Arab poets including his own poetry, which is why The Unique Necklace is a standard text for those interested in classical Arabic literature.