This lively volume collects poems by Hmedan alShweir who lived in Najd in the Arabian Peninsula shortly before the hegemony of the Wahhabi movement in the early eighteenth century.A master of satire known for his ribald humor selfdeprecation and invective verse hija Hmedan was acerbic in his criticisms of society and its morals voiced in in a poetic idiom that is widely referred to as Nabati here a mix of Najdi vernacular and archaic vocabulary and images dating back to the origins of Arabic poetry. In Arabian Satire Hmedan is mostly concerned with worldly matters and addresses these in different guises as the patriarch at the helm of the family boat and its unruly crew as a picaresque antihero who revels in taking potshots at the established order its hypocrisy and its moral failings as a peasant who labors over his palm trees often to no avail and with no guarantee of success and as a poet recording in verse how he thinks things ought to be.The poems in Arabian Satire reveal a plucky headstrong yet intensely socially committed figurerepresentative of the traditional Najdi ethoswho infuses his verse with proverbs maxims and words of wisdom expressed plainly and conversationally. Hmedan is accordingly quoted by historians of the Gulf region and in anthologies of popular sayings. This is the first full translation of this remarkable poet. A bilingual ArabicEnglish edition.