Poe's poetry and fiction are full of cultural and religious references to the Near East. This essay suggests that Poe's invocations of the Near East are part of a deliberately anti-representational strategy for dealing with cultural difference that constitutes part of Poe's understanding of one of his most central concepts, the 'arabesque'. This anti-representational strategy is built on Poe's sympathetic reading of texts associated with the Near East, Islam, and Arab and Persian cultures.