With few exceptions (notably the translations of Sir Charles Lyall) this bibliography includes only works which are currently available or which have been in print within the last couple of decades or so.
General Works
The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd edn., Leiden, 1954-, in progress).
Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, 2 vols. (London, 1998).
The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al. (Cambridge, 1983); The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: 'Abbasid Belles-Lettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et al. (Cambridge, 1990); The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L. Young et al. (Cambridge, 1990).
H. A. R. Gibb, Arabic Literature. An Introduction (2nd edn., Oxford, 1926; repr. 1974).
Clément Huart, A History of Arabic Literature (English trans. London, 1903; repr. 1987).
Salma Khadra Jayussi (ed.), The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Leiden, 1992).
R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge, 1907; repr. 1969).
Specialized Studies
Adonis, An Introduction to Arab Poetics (London, 1990).
Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld (Leiden, 1976).
Johann Christoph Bürgel, The Feather of Simurgh: The ‘Licit Magic’ of the Arts in Medieval Islam (New York, 1988).
Robert Hamilton, Walid and His Friends: An Umayyad Tragedy. Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, vol. 6 (Oxford, 1988).
Andras Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton, N.J., 1974).
Th. Emil Homerin, From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint. Ibn al-Farid, His Verse and His Shrine (Columbia, South Carolina, 1994).
Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion (Harmondsworth, 1994).
—, ‘The Arabic Beast Fable’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 (1992), pp. 36–50.
Philip F. Kennedy, The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry: Abu Nuwas and the Literary Tradition (Oxford, 1997).
Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam (2nd edn, Leiden, 1993).
S. Leder and H. Kilpatrick, ‘Classical Arabic Prose Literature: A Researcher’s Sketch Map’, journal of Arabic Literature 23 (1992), pp. 2–26.
Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam (London, 1937; repr. 1975).
Shmuel Moreh, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arabic World (Edinburgh, 1992).
Wen-chin Ouyang, Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition (Edinburgh, 1997).
Jaroslav Stetkevych, The Zephyrs of Najd (Chicago, 1993).
Suzanne Pinckey Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca and London, 1993).
The journal of Arabic Literature and Edebiyyat both contain many articles about and translations of classical Arabic literature.
Translations
A. J. Arberry, Aspects of Islamic Civilization (London, 1964).
A. F. L. Beeston (trans. and ed.), ‘The Epistle on Singing-Girls’ by Jahiz (Warminister, Wilts., 1980).
A. F. L. Beeston, Samples of Arabic Prose in its Historical Development (Oxford, 1977).
James A. Bellamy and Patricia Owen Steiner, Ibn Said al-Maghribi’s ‘The Banners of the Champions’ (Madison, Ind., 1989).
Herbert Howarth and Ibrahim Shukrullah, Images from the Arab World: Fragments of Arab Literature Translated and Paraphrased with Variations and Comments (London, 1977).
Alan Jones, Early Arabic Poetry: vol. 1, Select Odes (Reading, Berks., 1992); vol. 2, Marathi and Su'luk Poems (Reading, Berks., 1996). (Jones’s introduction to pre-Islamic poetry, and indeed to Arabic poetry more generally, is excellent.)
Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vols. (New York, 1974).
Charles Lyall (trans. of Mufaddal ibn al-Mufaddal), The Mufadaliyyat: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1918-21).
—, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry: chiefly pre-Islamic (London, 1930).
Christopher Middleton and Leticia Garza-Falcon, Andalusian Poems (Boston, Mass., 1993).
James T. Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology (Berkeley, Calif., 1974).
Reynold A. Nicholson, Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose (Cambridge, 1922; repr. 1987).
A. R. Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with the Old Provençal Troubadors (Baltimore, Md., 1946).
Omar S. Pound, Arabic and Persian Poems (Washington, D.C., 1970; 1986).
Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (London, 1975).
Stefan Sperl and Christopher Shackle (eds.), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1996).
Charles Greville Tuetey, Classical Arabic Poetry: 162 Poems from Imrulkais to Ma'arri (London, 1985).
Abdullah al-Udhari, Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster (Harmondsworth, 1975).
Translations of Individual Works or Authors
QUR’AN: A. J. Arberry (trans.), The Koran Interpreted (London, 1955). Alternative versions include: George Sale, The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammad (London, 1734) (despite its early date, this version is of value because of its heavy annotation); Richard Bell (trans.), The Koran (Edinburgh, 1937—9; repr. 1960).
ANONYMOUS: Husain Haddawy, The Arabian Nights (London and New York, 1990); N. J. Dawood, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights (Harmondsworth).
IBN HAZM: A. J. Arberry, The Ring of the Dove (London, 1953).
IBN MARZUBAN: G. R. Rex Smith and M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, The Book of the Superiority of Dogs over Many of Those Who Wear Clothes (Warminster, Wilts., 1977).
IBN AL-NADIM: Bayard Dodge (trans.), The Fihrist of al-Nadim, 2 vols. (New York, 1970).
IBN TUFAYL: Lenn E. Goodman, Ibn Tufayl’s ‘Hayy ibn Yaqzan’. (New York, 1972).
IKHWAN AL-SAFA': Lenn Evan Goodman, The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn: A Tenth-century Ecological Fable of the Pure Brethren of Basra (Boston, Mass., 1978).
JAHIZ: Charles Pellat (ed.), The Life and Works of Jahiz (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), English trans. D. M. Hawke; R. B. Serjeant, The Book of Misers (Reading, Berks., 1997).
MAS'UDI: Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids (London, 1989).
USAMAH IBN MUNQIDH: Philip K. Hitti, Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman (New York, 1929; repr. 1964 et seq.).