The obscure beginnings of Arabian poetry, presided over by the magician and his familiar spirits, have left not a rack behind in the shape of literature, but the task of reconstruction is comparatively easy where we are dealing with a people so conservative and tenacious of antiquity as the Arabs. Thus it may be taken for certain that the oldest form of poetical speech in Arabia was rhyme without metre (_Saj‘_), or, as we should say, 'rhymed prose,' although the fact of Muḥammad's adversaries calling him a poet because he used it in the Koran shows the light in which it was regarded even after the invention and elaboration of metre. Later on, as we shall see, _Saj‘_ became a merely rhetorical ornament, the distinguishing mark of all eloquence whether spoken or written, but originally it had a deeper, almost religious, significance as the special form adopted by poets, soothsayers, and the like in their supernatural revelations and for conveying to the vulgar every kind of mysterious and esoteric lore. [Sidenote: Rajaz.] Out of _Saj‘_ was evolved the most ancient of the Arabian metres, which is known by the name of _Rajaz_.[145] This is an irregular iambic metre usually consisting of four or six--an Arab would write 'two or three'--feet to the line; and it is a peculiarity of _Rajaz_, marking its affinity to _Saj‘_, that all the lines rhyme with each other, whereas in the more artificial metres only the opening verse[146] is doubly rhymed. A further characteristic of _Rajaz_ is that it should be uttered extempore, a few verses at a time--commonly verses expressing some personal feeling, emotion, or experience, like those of the aged warrior Durayd b. Zayd b. Nahd when he lay dying:-- "The house of death[147] is builded for Durayd to-day. Could Time be worn out, sure had I worn Time away. No single foe but I had faced and brought to bay. The spoils I gathered in, how excellent were they! The women that I loved, how fine was their array!"[148] [Sidenote: Other metres.] Here would have been the proper place to give an account of the principal Arabian metres--the 'Perfect' (_Kámil_), the 'Ample' (_Wáfir_) the 'Long' (_Ṭawíl_), the 'Wide' (_Basiṭ_), the 'Light' (_Khafíf_), and several more--but in order to save valuable space I must content myself with referring the reader to the extremely lucid treatment of this subject by Sir Charles Lyall in the Introduction to his _Ancient Arabian Poetry_, pp. xlv-lii. All the metres are quantitative, as in Greek and Latin. Their names and laws were unknown to the Pre-islamic bards: the rules of prosody were first deduced from the ancient poems and systematised by the grammarian, Khalíl b. Ahmad († 791 A.D.), to whom the idea is said to have occurred as he watched a coppersmith beating time on the anvil with his hammer. [Sidenote: The oldest extant poems.]