his opponents. "Imr-al-Kais," he said, "is the
finest of all poets, and their leader into everlasting fire." On another
occasion he is reported to have called out, "Verily, a belly full of
matter is better than a belly full of poetry." Even when citing verses,
he quoted them in such a manner as to destroy the metre. Abu Bekr very
properly remarked, "Truly God said in the 'Qur'an,' 'We have not taught
him poetry, and it suits him not.'" In thus decrying the poets of
"barbarism," and in setting up the 'Qur'an' as the greatest production
of Arabic genius, Muhammad was turning the national poetry to its
decline. Happily his immediate successors were unable or unwilling to
follow him strictly. Ali himself, his son-in-law, is said to have been a
poet; nor did the Umayyid Caliphs of Damascus, "very heathens in their
carnal part," bring the new spirit to its full bloom, as did the
Abbassides of Bagdad.

And yet the old spirit was gradually losing ground. The consolidation of
the empire brought greater security; the riches of Persia and Syria
produced new types of men. The centre of Arab life was now in the city,
with all its trammels, its forced politeness, its herding together. The
simplicity which characterized the early caliphs was going; in its place
was come a court,--court life, court manners, court poets. The love of
poetry was still there; but the poet of the tent had become the poet of
the house and the palace. Like those troubadours who had become
jongleurs, they lived upon the crumbs which fell from the table of
princes. Such crumbs were often not to be despised. Many a time and oft
the bard tuned his lyre merely for the price of his services. We know
that he was richly rewarded. Harun gave a dress worth four hundred
thousand pieces of gold to Ja'far ibn Yahya; at his death, Ibn 'Ubeid
al-Buchtari (865) left one hundred complete suits of dress, two hundred
shirts, and five hundred turbans--all of which had been given him for
his poems. The freshness of olden times was fading little by little; the
earnestness of the Bedouin poet was making way for a lightness of heart.
In this intermediate period, few were born so happily, and yet so imbued
with the new spirit, as was 'Umar ibn 'Rabi'a (644), "the man of
pleasure as well as the man of literature." Of rich parentage, gifted
with a love of song which moved him to speak in verses, he was able to
keep himself far from both prince and palace. He was of the family of
Kureis