The Arab society of the classical and medieval periods was one which, on the whole, lived fairly close to nature, while the literate classes were heir to a Bedouin tradition in which animal love played a prominent part, and, in addition, were much given to country pursuits such as hunting and falconry. Thus it is hardly surprising that writings about animals occupy a prominent part in the literature, as can easily be seen from a cursory inspection of Brockelmann's Geschichte der arabischen Literatur. A part of this literature is fairly technical, consisting of works on hunting, falconry, the care of horses and veterinary medicine, but, as well as this, there is a large body of material which could best be described as 'animal lore'; it is this literature which will be the subject of the present paper. The origins of this type of writing are somewhat heterogeneous. The most basic strand comes from pre-Islamic Arabia and draws its material from the ideas of the Bedouin about the animals which formed such an important part of the world about them and which were so vital for their own survival, whether wild or domesticated. That part of this traditional knowledge which dealt with the camel, the horse, and, to a lesser extent, other domesticated beasts, was detailed and had evolved the kind of specialized vocabulary which is one of the bugbears of the modern student of Jahiliyya poetry; some of the notions of the Bedouin about the wild life of the Arabian peninsula were rather more fanciful, such as the idea that the dabb, or uromastix lizard, lives on thin air. It may be remarked that pre-Islamic poetry is rather selective about the animals which it deems worthy to mention; we hear much of the oryx, or 'wild cow', the gazelle and the wolf, but virtually nothing of the jackal and the hyena, except perhaps as haunting deserted camp-sites. Our knowledge of the traditional folklore is, however, much augmented by the activities of the eighth-century antiquaries and collectors of poetry, of whom more later. Another source in which we find mention of animals is the Qur'an. Naturally, this is a source which is given prime importance by writers on animals, but it has to be said that while many animals are mentioned in the Qur'an there is no detailed discussion of their habits. As the Qur'an was revealed among essentially urban people, we need not be particularly surprised by this. Nevertheless, the Qur'an was a source that could not be ignored, and any elaboration of the information about animals contained in it, as of any other subject, could be regarded as an act of piety. The same remarks apply in a slightly lesser degree to the Hadith. This traditional material was collected and committed to writing by Basran and Kufan scholars like Abii 'Ubayda (A.D. 728-825) and in particular al-AsmaT (740-831), the author of a number of treatises, including K. al-Khayl, K. al-Ibil, K. al-Wuhaish, K. al-Shdh, K. alNahl wa-l-'asal and K. Khalq al-insdn. From what survives of these works we can say that they are not zoological works, but collections of traditional and historical material.