praise of the Virgin Mary. Then appeared some poems under the name "Songs of the Kings," composed by religious men in praise and glorification of the kings, in addition to some narratives in history and biographies.

Somalia: The Somali language is very old, but it remained unwritten, so its literature was not documented and remained transmitted orally by people. The Somali language is divided into two layers of vocabulary, one used in colloquial speech, while the second is limited to literature, especially poetry, which borrows some local words and others from the Arabic language. However, this language has become written in the Latin alphabet.

The Somali people have used the Arabic language for communication for more than a thousand years. They established schools for teaching the Arabic language, the Holy Quran, and Islamic sciences in the cities of this country, and to this day, there are Arabic schools from which a number of Arabic literature writers, Sufi poets, teachers of language, grammar, and literature, and scholars of Islamic jurisprudence have graduated.

It is difficult to determine the date of Somali poetry, which remained oral until the end of the nineteenth century AD. Little has reached us from this period due to the lack of a written language. The first half of the twentieth century AD is considered a stage of maturity for Somali poetry, which addressed most of the Arabic poetic purposes composed by the pre-Islamic poets due to the similarity of the two environments.

Among the poets of this stage are Ali Sharmarke, Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, Almi Huuh, and others who were known as poets of tribal historical debates, which is poetry inspired by pre-Islamic literature. Raghi Agas and Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan are considered among the earliest Somali poets.

Somali literature also included folk tales and legends that the Somali people enjoy in cities and the countryside, and are told by the storyteller in groups and in the markets. Some of these are legends told through animals, and others are directed at children, and most of these stories deal with advice, admonishments, and moral upbringing.