Hadith Bayad wa Riyad

"Bayad plays the oud to the lady", Arabic manuscript for Qissat Bayad wa Reyad tale (late 12th century)

Hadith Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ (Arabic: حديث بياض ورياض‎‎, Qissat Bayad wa Riyad or The Story of Bayad and Riyad) is a 13th-century Arabic love story. The main characters of the tale are Bayad, a merchant's son and a foreigner from Damascus, Riyad, a well educated girl in the court of an unnamed Hajib (vizier or minister) of 'Iraq (Mesopotamia) and a "Lady" (al-sayyida).

The Hadith Bayad wa Riyad manuscript is believed to be the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived from the more than eight centuries of Muslim medieval life in Spain and Portugal. The sole manuscript is in the Vatican Library, where it is catalogued as Codex Vat. Arabo 368.

See also

• Arabic epic literature
• Arabic literature

Further reading

• Alois R. Nykl. Historia de los amores de Bayad wa Riyad: Una chantefable oriental en estilo persa (Vat. Ar. 368). New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1941.
• Arianna D'Ottone, Il manoscritto Vaticano arabo 368: Hadith Bayad wa Riyad. Il codice, il testo, le immagini: alcune note, «Rivista di Storia della Miniatura» 14 (2010): 55-70
• La storia di Bayad e Riyad (Vat.ar. 368). Una nuova edizione e traduzione, ed. and trans. Arianna D'Ottone. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2013 (Studi e Testi 479). ISBN 978-88-210-0908-2.
• The Story of Bayad and Riyad - Qissat Bayad wa Riyad.
• Cynthia Robinson, Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture in the Mediterranean: Hadith Bayad Wa Riyad. New York: Routledge, 2007. ISBN 978-0415595926.

External links

• Al-Andalus: the art of Islamic Spain, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Hadith Bayad wa Riyad (see index)