The regular verb in Arabic has fifteen conjugations, two voices, two tenses, and several moods; the irregular verbs are many and mysterious to the beginner although grammarians try to make them appear easier by demonstrating that all their irregularities are strictly logical, not the result of linguistic perversity but foreseen calculation and providential wisdom. Is it not “the language of the angels”?—even the broken-plurals? As a final testimony to the difficulties of the Arabic language listen to Ion Keith Falconer. After passing the Semitic Languages Tripos at Cambridge under Dr. Wright, and taking a special course in Arabic at Leipzig, he writes from Assiut in Egypt: “I am getting on in Arabic, but it is most appallingly hard.... I have learned a good deal and can make myself intelligible to servants and porters. I have a teacher every day for two hours and translate from a child’s reading book.” After _five years_ of further study he writes once more from Aden (Jan. 17, 1886), “I am learning to speak Arabic quite nicely but it will be long before I can deliver real discourses.” And this man was an all-around scholar with a passion for languages. Without any doubt Arabic _is_ one of the most difficult languages in the world to acquire with any degree of fluency, and progress in its attainment means ceaseless plodding and endless diligence. XXV THE LITERATURE OF THE ARABS The literature of the Arabs is either pre-Islamic or post-Islamic; the former has as its chief classics the Muallakāt or seven suspended poems, the latter finds its centre and apex as well as its origin and inspiration in the Koran. The seven ancient poems, still extant, are also called _Muthahabat_ or the “golden poems,” and it is generally admitted by Arabic scholars that this was indeed the golden age of Arab literature. Zuhair, Zarafah, Imru-l-Kais, Amru-ibn-Kulsum, Al Harith, ’Antar and Labid were the authors of these poems and all but the last were idolaters, and belong to what the conceit of Islam calls “the Time of Ignorance.” These poems furnished the model ever afterward for later writers and, according to Baron de Slane, are remarkable for their perfection of form and exhibit a high degree of linguistic culture.