of a "prince who strays from his palace during his wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery, confusing a corpse with his bride. The story is used as a gnostic parable of the soul's pre-existence and return from its terrestrial sojourn." Many of the tales in the One Thousand and One Nights are also love stories or involve romantic love as a central theme, including the frame story of Scheherazade, and many of the stories she narrates, such as "Aladdin," "Ali Baba," "The Ebony Horse" and "The Three Apples." Satirical poetry The genre of Arabic satirical poetry was known as hija. Biting satirical poetry was dreaded for its power to immortalize its subjects in insulting ways, and could include sexual, scatological, and religiously profane material. The only way to recover from a satirical insult delivered in poetry was to respond in kind, which meant naqa'id, or satirical duels involving exchanges of poems, were a distinctive part of early Arabic poetry. In a tribal context, hija was often used to mock the poet's enemies or the virtue of rival tribes. Court poets like Abu Nuwas also employed satire, lampooning political figures like the vizier Ja'far ibn Yahya. After leaving Egypt, al-Mutanabbi mocked the eunuch ruler Abu al-Misk Kafur with a satirical poem: "Till I met this eunuch, I always assumed that the head was the seat of wisdom, but when I looked into his intelligence, I discovered that all his wisdom resided in his testicles." In the 10th century, the writer al-Tha'alibi recorded satirical poetry written by the poets as-Salami and Abu Dulaf, with as-Salami praising Abu Dulaf's wide breadth of knowledge and then mocking his ability in all these subjects, and with Abu Dulaf responding back and satirizing as-Salami in return. Another 10th-century poet, Jarir ibn Atiyah, satirized Farazdaq by using the term "Farazdaq-like" to describe an individual who was a "transgressor of the Shari'a". Abu Nuwas, in the 9th century, once responded to an insult from Hashim bin Hudayj, a philosopher, by composing verses sarcastically praising his wisdom, then imploring him to use his knowledge to explain how the penis functions. Poetic themesMadih, a eulogy or panegyricHija, a lampoon or insult poemRithā', an elegyWasf, a descriptive poemGhazal, a love poem, sometimes expressing love of menKhamriyyah, wine poetryTardiyyah, hunt poetryKhawal, homiletic poetryFakhr, boastingHamasah, war poetry Poetic forms Poetry in Arabic is traditionally grouped in a diwan or