"the long caravan marches across the monotonous deserts, when the camel's steady swing bends the rider's body almost double, taught the arab to sing rhymes." but the poems thus sung by camel-drivers are generally short and never reach epic might or length. none of those older poems now exist, and it was only when travellers applied the syrian alphabet to the arabic tongue in the sixth century that written records began to be kept of favorite compositions. poets were then looked upon as wise men, or magicians, and called upon, like balaam, in times of danger, to utter spells or incantations against the foe.
the most ancient pre-islamic poems were written in golden ink, suspended in the kaaba at mecca, and are known in arabia as the "necklace of pearls."
many of these poems—which replace epics in the east—follow fixed rules, the author being bound to "begin by a reference to the forsaken camping grounds. next he must lament, and pray his comrades to halt, while he calls up the memory of the dwellers who had departed in search of other encampments and fresh water springs. then he begins to touch on love matters, bewailing the tortures to which his passion puts him, and thus attracting interest and attention to himself. he recounts his hard and toilsome journeying in the desert, dwells on the lean condition of his steed, which he lauds and describes, and finally, with the object of obtaining those proofs of generosity which were the bard's expected meed and sole support, he winds up with a panegyric of the prince or governor in whose presence the poem is recited."
throughout the east, professional story-tellers still spend their lives travelling about and entertaining audiences in towns and tents with poems and legends, many of the latter treating of desert feuds and battles and forming part of a collection known as the arab days. with the founding of bagdad by the abbasides, persian influence begins to make itself felt, not only in politics but in literature also, although arabic was the sole language of the empire of the caliphs. the greatest literary work in this literature is the famous "arabian nights," an anonymous collection of tales connected by a thread of narrative. its purport is that an eastern monarch, "to protect himself against the craft and infidelity of women resolves that the wife he chooses him every day shall be put to death before the next." two sisters devote their lives to put an end to such massacres. the eldest, who becomes the king's wife, begs that her sister may spend the last night of her life in their room. at dawn the royal bride entertains her sister with a story which is cleverly left unfinished. such is the sultan's curiosity to hear the end, that the bride of a night is not slain, as usual. but as soon as one tale is ended another is begun, and for one thousand and one nights the clever narrator keeps her audience of two in suspense. most of the tales told in this collection are obviously of persian origin, and are contained in the hasar afsana (the thousand tales) which was translated into arabic in the tenth century. but some authorities claim that these stories originated in india and were brought into persia before alexander's conquests. these tales are so popular that they have been translated into every civilized language and are often termed prose epics.
arabic also boasts a romance of chivalry entitled "romance of 'antar,'" ascribed to al asmai (739-831), which contains the chief events in arab history before the advent of mahomet and is hence often termed the arab iliad.
the "romance of beni hilal" and that of "abu zaid," which form part of a cycle of 38 legends, are popular in egypt to this day.
