the concept of hijāʾ as a separate mode, gharaḍ, existed from the earliest times. The term itself and cognate verbal forms are present in poems, even in pre-Islamic times, to a greater extent than the terms belonging to other modes: the words nasīb, madīḥ, fakhr, rithāʾ, etc. rarely occur in poems. The explanation must be that in hijāʾ, more than in any other mode, the poet is concerned with the effect of his poem; the descption of the effect is an essential part of hijāʾ itself, or of those poems in which the opponent is threatened with hijāʾ.