De- spite the fame gained by naq¯a - id . poetry in the Umayyad era, many as- pects of it are still ambiguous. Unfortunately, many of the scholars who have dealt with such aspects have arrived at their conclusions through a rapid treatment of only some of the accounts mentioned in various classical works. A considerable number of these studies neglect other accounts that seem to reveal important data concerning many aspects of the naq¯a - id . poetry. In addition, in most cases they refrain from an- alyzing complete poems in order to support or disprove the conclusions they had extracted from the accounts. Such a method of analyzing and discussing the material at hand is insufficient. It is imperative to pe- ruse all the available accounts and to make a profound analysis of each one, since each account may shed new light on the naq¯a - id . poetry and the naq¯a - id . contests. In addition to the accounts, analyses of the po- ems themselves are very important, since they examine the reliability and credibility of the prose accounts.