Hat a competent knowledge of the Ker-an is indispensable as an introduction to the study of Arabic literature will be admitted by all who have advanced beyond the rudiments of the language. From the purity of its style and elegance of its diction it has come to be considered as the standard of Arabic even by those who have no belief in its pretensions to a divine origin, while so great is its authority among the followers of Mohammad, that it would be difficult to name a work by any Mussulman writer which does not abound in allusions to its precepts or in quotations from its pages.