Note 66 — PART I.

See the preface to the most valuable work Le Divan d’Amro’lkais, par le baron Mac Guckin de Slane, Paris, 1837, pp. viii and ix. The learned author confirms that celebrated Arabian poems existed before the introduction of the Muhammedan religion, which, for a certain time, averted the Arabs from the cultivation of poetry and history. We shall here add (which would have been more appropriately placed in the note upon Amro’lKais, in vol. III p. 65, and will correct the same) that this poet (see loc. cit., p. xvi et seq.) flourished at an epoch anterior to Muhammed, and died probably before the birth of that extraordinary man.