By the ancient Arabs the poet (_shá‘ir_, plural _shu‘ará_), as his name implies, was held to be a person endowed with supernatural knowledge, a wizard in league with spirits (_jinn_) or satans (_shayáṭín_) and dependent on them for the magical powers which he displayed. This view of his personality, as well as the influential position which he occupied, are curiously indicated by the story of a certain youth who was refused the hand of his beloved on the ground that he was neither a poet nor a soothsayer nor a water-diviner.[140] The idea of poetry as an art was developed afterwards; the pagan _shá‘ir_ is the oracle of his tribe, their guide in peace and their champion in war. It was to him they turned for counsel when they sought new pastures, only at his word would they pitch or strike their 'houses of hair,' and when the tired and thirsty wanderers found a well and drank of its water and washed themselves, led by him they may have raised their voices together and sung, like Israel-- "Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it."[141] [Sidenote: Satire.] Besides fountain-songs, war-songs, and hymns to idols, other kinds of poetry must have existed in the earliest times--_e.g._, the love-song and the dirge. The powers of the _shá‘ir_, however, were chiefly exhibited in Satire (_hijá_), which in the oldest known form "introduces and accompanies the tribal feud, and is an element of war just as important as the actual fighting."[142] The menaces which he hurled against the foe were believed to be inevitably fatal. His rhymes, often compared to arrows, had all the effect of a solemn curse spoken by a divinely inspired prophet or priest,[143] and their pronunciation was attended with peculiar ceremonies of a symbolic character, such as anointing the hair on one side of the head, letting the mantle hang down loosely, and wearing only one sandal.[144] Satire retained something of these ominous associations at a much later period when the magic utterance of the _shá‘ir_ had long given place to the lampoon by which the poet reviles his enemies and holds them up to shame. [Sidenote: Saj‘.]