passed rapidly from mouth to mouth, little would have been preserved for us had there not been a class of men who, led on some by desire, some by necessity, made it their business to write down the compositions, and to keep fresh in their memory the very pronunciation of each word.  Every poet had such a Rawiah.  Of one Hammad it is said that he could recite one hundred Kasidahs rhyming on each letter of the alphabet, each Kasidah having at least one hundred verses.  Abu Tammam (805), the author of the ‘Hamasah,’ is reported to have known by heart fourteen thousand pieces of the metre rajaz.  It was not, however, until the end of the first century of the Hijrah that systematic collections of this older literature were commenced.

It was this very Hammad (died 777) who put together seven of the choicest poems of the early Arabs.  He called them ’Mu ’allakat,’—­“the hung up” (in a place of honor, in the estimation of the people).  The authors of these seven poems were:  Imr-al-Kais, Tarafa, Zuheir, Labid (570), ’Antara, ’Amr, and al-Harith.  The common verdict of their countrymen has praised the choice made by Hammad.  The seven remained the great models, to which later poets aspired:  in description of love, those of Imr-al-Kais and ’Antara; in that of the camel and the horse, Labid; of battle, ’Amr; in the praise of arms, Harith; in wise maxims, Zuheir.  To these must be added al-Nabighah, ’Alkamah, Urwa ibn al-Ward, Hassan ibn Thabit, al-A’sha, Aus ibn Hajar, and as-Shanfarah, whose poem has been called “the most magnificent of old Arabic poems.”  In addition to the single poems found in the ’Mu ‘allakat’ and elsewhere, nearly all of these composed whole series of poems, which were at a later time put in the form of collections and called ‘Diwans.’  Some of these poets have left us as many as four hundred verses.  Such collections were made by grammarians and antiquarians of a later age.  In addition to the collections made around the name of a single poet, others were made, fashioned upon a different principle:  The ‘Mufaddaliyat’ (the most excellent poems), put together by al-Mufaddal (761); the ‘Diwan’ of the poets of the tribe of Hudheil; the ‘Hamasah’ (Bravery; so called from the subject of the first of the ten books into which the collection is divided) of Abu Tammam.  The best anthology of these poems is ‘The Great Book of Songs,’ put together by Abu al-Faraj al-Ispa-hani (died 967).

With these poets Arabic literature reached its highest development.  They are the true expression of the free Arabic spirit.  Most of them lived before or during the time of the appearance of Muhammad.  His coming produced a great change in the life of the simple Bedouins.  Though they could not be called heathen, their religion expressed itself in the simple feeling of dependence upon higher powers, without attempting to bring this faith into a close connection with their daily life.  Muhammad introduced a system into which he tried to mold all things.