السحر الحلال

No people in the world manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and are so ‎moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs. Modern audiences in Baghdad, Damascus ‎and Cairo can be stirred to the highest degree by the recital of poems, only vaguely ‎comprehended, and by the delivery of orations in the classical tongue, though it be only ‎partially understood. The rhythm, the rhyme, the music, produce on them the effect of what they ‎call "lawful magic" (sihr halal).‎

Philip K Hitti, History of the Arabs