Abstract

Why (and how) does a person become a poet? Is it a hidden super-powerful force that connects poetry to some people and makes them a creative poet? Or is poetry a nature that some people are born with? Or is poetry acquired and learned through training and practice?
The researcher finds texts containing many opinions, perceptions, and theories of novelists, poetry critics, and poets themselves from the Jahiliyya era to the end of the Abbasid era related to answering these questions. These opinions sometimes agree, sometimes differ, and may combine in the same idea contradictory texts, and from these opinions and texts it is possible to determine the general lines of the ancient Arab perception of this subject.
In the ancient Arabic heritage, as in other nations, the idea that the creation of poetry is associated with hidden forces called (jinn) or (devils) poets, because of the charming words that the poets sing, which affect the souls of the recipients so much and arouse their admiration and wonder, that they cannot attribute the poetry to its author, so they imagine that hidden forces put it on their tongues. This research examined these traditional beliefs about the relationship between poets and jinn and its development in a critical and analytical study.