To literature proper the true Arabs would have contributed little. In their original home their poetry had mostly taken the shape of the _qasîda_, a loosely connected ode, in which an introduction concerning the forsaken camping ground was regularly followed by reflections on the singer’s love affairs, and these by thoughts concerning his desert wanderings, his steed, and finally his chief. Of most importance to us, perhaps, is the fact that this Arabic verse was in rhyme, and that short odes, or _ghazels_, of fourteen lines, appear to anticipate the sonnet, a form which arose in Sicily in a court frequented by cultured Moslems. After the establishment of Islam, the new religion at first exercised a cramping effect, but the same fondness for rhyme (which, indeed, was associated with notions of sacred or magic power) introduced it even into the prose of the Koran. When the Saracen conquest had extended widely and included Persia, the superior culture of the Persians gave them, from about A.D. 750, a predominating influence at the court of the Abbasids at Bagdad. Arabic literature, therefore, widened its forms and themes, and its poetry now embraced lyrics of love and wine, satires and elegies, largely of Persian origin. Of this poetry in general it may be said that it is marked by a peculiar predilection for sententious wisdom in the shape of proverbs and aphorisms, and for fables and allegories which convey similar maxims. These, we shall find, appear in full force in Spain, where they are converted into part of the earliest literature in Spanish. For the collection of such fables the Arabs and Persians could reach a hand in either direction. From the west they could take the Greek fables of Aesop and convert them into the Arabic fables of Loqman; from the east they could gather the Indian fables of Pilpay (or Bidpai), translated first from the Indian _Pancatantra_ into the Middle Persian (better called Pehlevi), and thence by Muqaffa into the Arabic _Kalila and Dimna_. In this collection the actions of the beasts serve subtly to convey to a prince rules of wise conduct, more moral than the later principles of Macchiavelli. The Orientals showed an equal passion for purely romantic stories, provided that they contained wonderful and magical occurrences, much prowess, and luscious suggestions of magnificence and pleasure. _The Thousand and One Nights_, better known as the _Arabian Nights_, form an immense body of such compositions, which have been perpetually translated and re-translated, and which are still among the standard books of the world.