ABSTRACT
POETRY, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE IN THE 'ABBA-SID PERIOD
and ideas introduced by Islam would rapidly work a The Pre-Islamic poets regarded corresponding revolution in the poetical literature
far from being the case. The Umayyad poets clung tenaciously to the great models of the Heroic Age and even took credit for their skilful imitation of the antique odes. The early Mui}.ammadan critics, who were philologists by profession, held fast to the principle that Poetry in Pre-islamic times had reached a perfection which no modern bard could hope to emulate, and which only the lost ideals of chivalry could inspire.r To have been born after Islam was in itself a proof of poetical illferiority.2 Linguistic considerations, of course, entered largely into this prejudice. The old poems were studied as repositories of the pure classical tongue and were estimated mainly from a grammarian's standpoint.
