There are the total of genres & forms inside Arabic literature: Adab, Maqama, Qasida, Arabic epic literature, and Hanged Poems.

The origins of the modern Arabic novel
A origins of the modern Arabic novel can be traced to a long run of ethnical revival & assimilation, referred to inside Arabic when a Nahda (النهضة), or even Renaissance. Characteristic of this cycle were 2 distinct trends. A Neo-Neoclassic movement sought to rediscover a literary traditions of a past, & was influenced by traditional literary genres like the maqama and the Thousand and One Nights. Around counterpoint, a Modernist movement began by translating American works, primarily novels, into Arabic.

Single authors within Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt created original works by imitating the definitive maqama. A virtually all large one was al-Mawilhi, whose book, The Hadith of Issa ibn Hisham (حديث عيسى بن هشام), critiqued Egyptian society during Muhammad Ali. This function is a number 1 stage in the development of the modern Arabic novel. This trend was furthered by Georgy Zeidan, a Lebanese Christian writer world health organization immigrated by having his personal to Egypt resulting a Damascus riots of 1860. In the early twentieth century, Zeidan serialized his historical novels in the Egyptian newspaper al-Halal. These novels were pleasantly popular, especially compared to using a works of al-Mawilhi, because of their clarity of language, elementary structure, & andy skinner's intense imagination. 2 more significant writers from either this time period were Khalil Gibran and Mikha'il Naima, both of whom incorporated philosophical musings into their works.

Nonetheless, literary critics don't accept a works one quaternary authors to become admittedly novels, however like indications of a form that the modern novel would assume. Numbers of one critics point to Zind, the novel by Muhammad Hasanayn Haykhal as the first admittedly Arabic-language novel, when others point to Adraa Denshawi by Muhammad Tahir Haqqi as the number one confessedly novel.

Arabic poetry
Notable poets include: Ahmad ibn-al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi, (915–965) Abu 'Afak Abu Tammam Abu Nuwas, (756–815) Al-Khansa Asma bint Marwan

Taghribat Bani Hilal forms part of the epic tradition.

Noted authors
Historical
Antara Ibn Shaddad al-'Absi, pre-Islamic Arab hero and poet (fl. 580 CE). al-Hariri (1054–1122) Muhammad al-Nawaji bin Hasan bin Ali bin Othman, Cairene mystic, Sufi & poet (1383?–1455)

Modern
Tayeb Salih Abdul Rahman Munif Naguib Mahfouz, (1911—) Nobel Prize for Literature (1988), famous for the Cairo Trilogy just about life in the straggly inner city. Ahlam Mosteghanemi, notable for being a number 1 Algerian woman published inside English Ra'ouf Mus'ad, not one of the most well-known Arab authors, but interesting. Tawfiq Awwad, famous Lebanese author