Pre-Islamic Poetry. At the time of the revelation of Islam, a highly developed oral poetry already existed in Arabic. Although all languages produce poetry, especially in their primal phase before the introduction of writing, the Arabic language is exceptionally poetic because of its morphological structure, in which words are built up from three-letter roots according to a limited number of fixed patterns, and there is relatively little elaboration of words through prefixes and suffixes. These linguistic facts have made the Arabic language a particularly effective vehicle for poetry and other literature, especially after the civilizational development it has gone through over the course of its existence. Even in the pre-Islamic era, poetry was an important and ubiquitous vehicle of public expression. Poets exercised great influence through their ability to praise or to condemn eloquently. Some have likened their effect on their people to that...