About this article (quote by volume editors/introduction): "(...) Isabel Toral describes how the development of Arabic belles-lettres and fine artistic prose owed much to the stylistic refinement introduced by the administrative elite in Baghdād, and how the city profited from the influx of intellectuals from elsewhere. She argues that, in contrast to scholars of the Islamic sciences, litterateurs were so dependent on patronage that they left the city gradually left the city when the ʿAbbāsid

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... urt and the elite was unable to support them, leading to a decline of literary production in the city from the 10th century onward."