Muḥammadans include the whole period of Arabian history from the earliest times down to the establishment of Islam in the term _al-Jáhiliyya_, which was used by Muḥammad in four passages of the Koran and is generally translated 'the state or ignorance' or simply 'the Ignorance.' Goldziher, however, has shown conclusively that the meaning attached to _jahl_ (whence _Jáhiliyya_ is derived) by the Pre-islamic poets is not so much 'ignorance' as 'wildness,' 'savagery,' and that its true antithesis is not _‘ilm_ (knowledge), but rather _ḥilm_, which denotes the moral reasonableness of a civilised man. "When Muḥammadans say that Islam put an end to the manners and customs of the _Jáhiliyya_, they have in view those barbarous practices, that savage temper, by which Arabian heathendom is distinguished from Islam and by the abolition of which Muḥammad sought to work a moral reformation in his countrymen: the haughty spirit of the _Jáhiliyya_ (_ḥamiyyatu ’l-Jáhiliyya_), the tribal pride and the endless tribal feuds, the cult of revenge, the implacability and all the other pagan characteristics which Islam was destined to overcome."[74] Our sources of information regarding this period may be classified as follows:-- [Sidenote: Sources of information concerning the Jáhiliyya.] (1) _Poems and fragments of verse_, which though not written down at the time were preserved by oral tradition and committed to writing, for the most part, two or three hundred years afterwards. The importance of this, virtually the sole contemporary record of Pre-islamic history, is recognised in the well-known saying, "Poetry is the public register of the Arabs (_al-shi‘ru díwánu ’l-‘Arab_); thereby genealogies are kept in mind and famous actions are made familiar." Some account of the chief collections of old Arabian poetry will be given in the next chapter. (2) _Proverbs._ These are of less value, as they seldom explain themselves, while the commentary attached to them is the work of scholars bent on explaining them at all costs, though in many cases their true meaning could only be conjectured and the circumstances of their origin had been entirely forgotten. Notwithstanding this very pardonable excess of zeal, we could ill afford to lose the celebrated collections of Mufaḍḍal b. Salama († _circa_ 900 A.D.) and Maydání († 1124 A.D.),[75] which contain so much curious information throwing light on every aspect of Pre-islamic life. [Sidenote: _The Book of Songs._]