It is now time to turn to two of the most fundamental questions in the history of letter-writing in pre-modern Islamic society. Why and how did letter-writing come to prominence as the most important mode of written, artistic prose communication? How did it remain the most popular writerly form for so many centuries? There is no doubt that historical and social circumstances played a major role in its longevity, since the expansion of the Islamic state created a need for a reliable form of communication that could be conveyed over vast distances. But I am going to argue over the next few chapters that the success of epistolary prose, particularly in its capacity as an artistic form, was equally dependent not just on the literary skills of the secretary but also on his all-round professional acumen. In other words, these two aspects of the secretary's daily existence went hand in hand.

The continued prominence of epistolary prose was effectively guaranteed by a rigorous debate that attempted to justify the superiority of prose over poetry, and to a lesser extent, prose over oratory. Its popularity was also sustained by the very fact that the secretary controlled the literary climate to which the epistolary genre belonged, and exploited that situation to emphasise that his pen was also his sword. The changing of the name of the Chancery from Dīwān al-Inšā' ‘The Composition Chancery’ to Dīwān al-Mukātabāt ‘The Chancery of Epistolary Communication’ during the Ayyūbid period is just one very important illustration of how letter-writing and epistolary prose ascended as one to full prominence. It thus also strengthened the case of those who argued for the precedence of prose over poetry, a polemic that provoked substantial debate, as I shall demonstrate shortly.