Nabih Amin Faris, who has just accepted an appointment on the faculty of the American University of Beirut, is the translator. Previous to that he was Research Associate in Oriental Languages and curator of the Arabic and Islamic MSS, Princeton University and recently Head of the Arabic Desk, Office of War Information. He is the editor and translator of Antiquities of South Arabia, and editor of The Arab Heritage and of Al-Iklil.

Robert Potter Elmer, who furnishes the interesting and informative Notes and Appendix, is an accomplished archer, eight times national champion in the sport. He is the author of Archery, the standard work in English on the practice and history of archery, and has contributed all the archery etymologies in Webster's New International Dictionary, as well as the article on archery in the Encyclopedia Britannica, fourteenth edition.

This fortunate collaboration of an Arabic scholar and an internationally known archer has resulted in an entertaining and valuable book of equal interest both to students of Arabic and to those interested in the sport of archery. It places at the disposal of the philologist a wealth of lore unrecorded elsewhere, and offers to the cultural historian clues to the history and development of archery.