Some thirty years have passed since the original publication of M. M. Ahsan's Social Life Under the Abbasids, but it remains an invaluable resource for the study of the material culture of Abbasid life in the ninth and tenth centuries. Ahsan arranges his material thematically-costume, food, housing, hunting, indoor and outdoor games, and festivities and festivals. Moreover, that arrangement together with the eclectic mix of citations, also give readers a taste of what it is like to browse through the many kinds of adab works that are Ahsan's main sources, including, among numerous others, anecdotal, biographical, culinary, geographical, and literary texts.
