This work provides a critique of Arabic textual sources for the history of the Arabs in late antique times, during the centuries immediately preceding Muhammad and up to and including the Umayyad period. Aziz Al-Azmeh considers the value and relevance of a range of literary sources, including orality and literacy, ancient Arabic poetry, the corpus of Arab heroic lore (ayyam), the early narrative, and the Qur'an, for the reconstruction of the social, political, cultural and religious history of the Arabs.