Introduction Amides can be prepared by several well-established procedures including acylation of amines, hydration of nitriles, and rearrangement reactions such as the Schmidt and Beckmann procedures. These methods were re- viewed by Beckwith.' A direct arylamidation procedure has been reported, in which an arene can condense with a hydroxamic acid? but this has limited scope.3 Apart from a recent report by Nahmed and Jenner, who carried out reductive ...