Abstract: The courtly panegyric poetry played a new political role at the time of the Umayyad dynasty. The Umayyad caliphs who were surrounded by enemies needed this type of poetry to establish their authority, claim their legitimacy, and to protect their Caliphate against al-khaw?rij in Najd and al-Irrq, al-H-usayn bin 'Ali and his Shite in al-K fah, and Ibn al-Zubayr in al-Hnijlz and Yemen. In order to do so, the Umayyad court started to attract the greatest poets of their time, such as al-Farazdaq, Jardr, and al-'Akht al. The same thing was done by Umayyad's rivals, except for the fact that the Umayyad dynasty had the upper hand financially. My goal in this paper, above all, is to examine the influence of this kind of poetry in terms of persuading the public opinion, refuting the rival's argument, and eventually legitimizing the patron. Looking at the role of poetry in these politico-cultural conflicts from a modern perspective and based on the work on Verbal Duel in Western literature, this paper argues that poetry was the only possible expedient through which Caliphs and caliphate hopefuls could appeal to the public. It is actually very similar to the presidential debates of our days where each candidate gets the opportunity to appeal to the public by comparing his agenda to his rivals'.