We have now to consider the form and matter of the oldest extant poems in the Arabic language. Between these highly developed productions and the rude doggerel of _Saj‘_ or _Rajaz_ there lies an interval, the length of which it is impossible even to conjecture. The first poets are already consummate masters of the craft. "The number and complexity of the measures which they use, their established laws of quantity and rhyme, and the uniform manner in which they introduce the subject of their poems,[149] notwithstanding the distance which often separated one composer from another, all point to a long previous study and cultivation of the art of expression and the capacities of their language, a study of which no record now remains."[150] [Sidenote: Their date.] It is not improbable that the dawn of the Golden Age of Arabian Poetry coincided with the first decade of the sixth century after Christ. About that time the War of Basús, the chronicle of which has preserved a considerable amount of contemporary verse, was in full blaze; and the first Arabian ode was composed, according to tradition, by Muhalhil b. Rabí‘a the Taghlibite on the death of his brother, the chieftain Kulayb, which caused war to break out between Bakr and Taghlib. At any rate, during the next hundred years in almost every part of the peninsula we meet with a brilliant succession of singers, all using the same poetical dialect and strictly adhering to the same rules of composition. The fashion which they set maintained itself virtually unaltered down to the end of the Umayyad period (750 A.D.), and though challenged by some daring spirits under the ‘Abbásid Caliphate, speedily reasserted its supremacy, which at the present day is almost as absolute as ever. [Sidenote: The Qaṣída.]