(3) _Traditions and legends._ Since the art of writing was neither understood nor practised by the heathen Arabs in general, it was impossible that Prose, as a literary form, should exist among them. The germs of Arabic Prose, however, may be traced back to the _Jáhiliyya_. Besides the proverb (_mathal_) and the oration (_khuṭba_) we find elements of history and romance in the prose narratives used by the rhapsodists to introduce and set forth plainly the matter of their songs, and in the legends which recounted the glorious deeds of tribes and individuals. A vast number of such stories--some unmistakably genuine, others bearing the stamp of fiction--are preserved in various literary, historical, and geographical works composed under the ‘Abbásid Caliphate, especially in the _Kitábu ’l-Aghání_ (Book of Songs) by Abu ’l-Faraj of Iṣfahán († 967 A.D.), an invaluable compilation based on the researches of the great Humanists as they have been well named by Sir Charles Lyall, of the second and third centuries after the Hijra.[76] The original writings of these early critics and scholars have perished almost without exception, and beyond the copious citations in the _Aghání_ we possess hardly any specimens of their work. "The _Book of Songs_," says Ibn Khaldún, "is the Register of the Arabs. It comprises all that they had achieved in the past of excellence in every kind of poetry, history, music, _et cetera_. So far as I am aware, no other book can be put on a level with it in this respect. It is the final resource of the student of belles-lettres, and leaves him nothing further to desire."[77] [Sidenote: Scope of this chapter.] In the following pages I shall not attempt to set in due order and connection the confused mass of poetry and legend in which all that we know of Pre-islamic Arabia lies deeply embedded. This task has already been performed with admirable skill by Caussin de Perceval in his _Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme_,[78] and it could serve no useful purpose to inflict a dry summary of that famous work upon the reader. The better course, I think, will be to select a few typical and outstanding features of the time and to present them, wherever possible, as they have been drawn--largely from imagination--by the Arabs themselves. If the Arabian traditions are wanting in historical accuracy they are nevertheless, taken as a whole, true in spirit to the Dark Age which they call up from the dead and reverently unfold beneath our eyes. [Sidenote: The Arab dynasties of Ḥíra and Ghassán.] [Sidenote: Odenathus and Zenobia.]