These adventurous legends are only a few of the many Arabian Nights that were the main entertainment media then and continued to be so well into our modern times.
Abbasid writers also developed new genres of literature such as adab, the embodiment of sensible counsel, sometimes in the form of animal fables; a typical example is Kalilah wa-Dimnah, translated by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ from a Pahlavi version of an Indian work. Writers of this period also studied tribal traditions and wrote the first systematic Arabic grammars.