Excerpt from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, With Historical Surveys of the Chief Writings of Each Nation, Vol. 6: Medieval Arabic, Moorish, and Turkish The Arabic literary spirit was thus compelled to cling to its old pre-mohammedan form. That is, it expressed itself only in brief personal poems, in skilfully phrased epigrams, satiric couplets, or rubaiyat, called forth by a sudden oc casion. A collection of the best known of these poems, gath ered from successive ages of gay and dashing singers, is given at the close of our Arabic section. Gradually, however, a change came over the victorious Arab race. The warriors lost their intense religious inspira tion. They fought among themselves for place and power. The enormous wealth which they had conquered, with its resulting temptations to luxury and ease and empty vanity, weakened them, lured them from both the high moral strength which they had really attained, and from the fanatic frenzy of faith which had been their pride. They removed the capital of their empire from the holy cities of Arabia, first to Damascus and then to Bagdad, the wonderful dream-city of splendor which they built upon the banks of the ancient Tigris river. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.