ASMAI or Asmayi (full name, Abu Saïd Abd-el-Melek Ibn Koraïb El-Asmaî), is one of the most important representatives of Arabic literature in the 8th century of the Christian era. He was born at Basra 740 or 741 A.D, and attained, by his extensive erudition, to the high rank of preceptor to Harun al-Rashid, whose court was in that generation the great focus of intellectual activity in the East. Asmai was, as has been happily remarked by Barbier de Meynard, the almost perfect type of those nomadic devotees of literature who, after they had grown pale on the benches of Basra or Kufa, went to complete their education in the desert, in possession of boundless stores of learning, and yet animated by an enthusiasm for further acquisition, which made them willing to travel across the sands for hundreds of leagues, if only they might preserve an ancient tradition or pick up the fragments of an ancient song. Of the results of his labours he was no niggard, and a long list might be drawn up of his various productions. It is sufficient, however, to mention his synchronous history of the kings of Persia and Arabia previous to Islam—a work which Sir Henry Rawlinson has described as “perhaps the most valuable and authentic historic volume in the whole range of Arabian literature n — and his wonderful romance of Antar, which might almost be called the Iliad of the desert. He attained a good old age, dying, as is generally supposed, about 830 a.d., and left behind him a number of pupils, such as Thâlab, Ibn-el-Anberi, and Sukkari, who proved themselves worthy of their master.