Splitting the Moon: A Collection of Islamic Poetry

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He is also very active in the literary arts, and has written regular columns in emel and other Islamic magazines and published much fiction and poetry.

One can see in the above poem not only references to the traditional practices of Islam (albeit ones that occurred in a slightly different form before Muhammed [pbuh]), but a more prominent personal touch than in the pre-Islamic poems.One of these characteristics is that in pre-Islamic poetry more attention was given to the eloquence and the wording of the verse than to the poem as whole. In fact, one could make the case that he is among the greatest poets to have lived regardless of religion or ethnicity. One of the most common forms was known as the tawil¸ which was made up of units of two lines printed side by side with a space between them (known as a distich). The best Islamic poems in Urdu with 2 lines to 4 lines can be read here from this page – Islamic poems in Urdu by Allama Iqbal. Poetry held an important position in pre-Islamic society with the poet or sha'ir filling the role of historian, soothsayer and propagandist.

There are several characteristics that distinguish pre-Islamic poetry from the poetry of later times. The works of the great early Arab poets were transmitted orally from generation to generation, with the poets themselves often giving public recitations. In a culture with few if any written traditions, reciters—known as rawis in Arabic—committed to memory the poetry and songs of their poets, some of them hundreds of lines long, and recited them at public assemblies and private gatherings. But in Hafiz's poetry this apparent yearning for what is illicit in Islam normally presented in a highly ambiguous way - a tendency which is again visible in the works of a number of early Sufis.

Islamic poetry, and notably Sufi poetry, has been written in many languages including Urdu and Turkish. One of the first major poets in the pre-Islamic era is Imru' al-Qais, the last king of the kingdom of Kinda. The Hadith Bayad wa Riyad manuscript is believed to be the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived from more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arab presence in Spain.