There is yet one remaining source from which we derive information regarding
Mahomet and the early Arabs, namely, the writings of contemporary POETS. No
doubt poems and fragments of poetry, earlier even than the age of Mahomet,
were handed down for a time in greater or less purity. Tradition makes
frequent mention of Poems, satirical, eulogistic, and elegiac, having direct
reference to the Prophet; and these are constantly quoted both by Biographers
and Genealogists. But a class of littérateurs sprang up whose art and
pride it was to counterfeit the compositions of the older poets. By study and
practice they acquired so close a perception of the style and language of each
period and of the individual poets who flourished in it, that they could
assign any line quoted at random to its proper author, and could even coin
verses cast so delicately in the desired type that the most careful scrutiny
of the scholar could not always detect the forgery. Thus later pieces often
circulated in the name of early authors, whose poems were interpolated with
foreign matter blending with the original too closely to be afterwards
separated.2