"Ahab the Arab" is a novelty song written and recorded by Ray Stevens in 1962. In the song, Arab is pronounced "Ay-rab" to rhyme with Ahab. The hero of the story is Clyde the camel and Stevens has made references to Clyde numerous times throughout his career.

It followed "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills" becoming his second top 40 hit. It reached number five on Billboard's Hot 100 and number nine on the Billboard R&B chart. It remains one of the best selling records of Stevens' career. Stevens has recorded the song at least three times and there have also been edited versions.

The song portrays a "sheik of the burning sands" named Ahab. He is highly decorated with jewelry, and every night he hops on his camel named Clyde on his way to see Fatima, who is the best dancer in the Sultan's harem. Fatima is described with a modified quote from the 1909 hit, "I've Got Rings On My Fingers": "with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and a bone in her nose, ho ho". During the ride, Ahab "speaks" (actually, produces ululations that parody the Arabic language) to Clyde. (A later version adds the advertising catch phrase "Sold, American!" to the end of one chant. This is perhaps due to a Kinky Friedman (famous for the song and album Sold American) cover version which also added those lines).

When Ahab finds Fatima in her tent, she is ironically engaged in stereotypically Western behavior: "eating on a raisin, and a grape, and an apricot, and a pomegranate, a bowl of chittlins, two bananas, three Hershey bars, and sipping on an RC Cola, and eating a Moon Pie, listenin' to her transistor, watchin' the Grand Ole Opry, and readin' Mad Magazine while she sung, 'Does your chewing gum lose its flavor?'" Ahab woos Fatima with another mock Arabic chant, this time a quote from the song "Let's Twist Again" by Chubby Checker. Fatima (portrayed by Stevens in falsetto) responds to Ahab's advances with laughter and an (English) utterance that Ahab is "crazy."

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