For centuries, many Arabic literary critics have harbored a notable bias against poetry composed in what has now come to be termed “colloquial” varieties of Arabic. This bias manifests itself differently across eras, yet has always been strikingly apparent to anyone familiar with the Arabic poetic tradition and its renowned critics. Nevertheless, there have been very few studies that deal with this bias, its roots, logic, and why it continues in Arabic literary criticism and scholarship until this very day. This issue should urgently be discussed, as poetry composed in what is now known as fuṣḥā is but a fraction of the many poems belonging to a diverse array of poetic traditions and heritages that can fall under the umbrella of “Arabic poetry.” In essence, most scholars have studied the poetry of the elite few while disregarding and sometimes actively excluding the “non-standard” popular poetic traditions. My project deals with the roots of this bias in the process of canonization and standardization of the Arabic language, focusing on the role poetry played in that process. This process contributed not only to establishing a distinct model for the classical Arabic qaṣīda, but also to the exclusion of other non-qaṣīda forms of Arabic poetry. A curious case is another fuṣḥā form of poetry, rajaz, which was largely excluded but gradually made its way into the classical canon. I also discuss the works of scholars of the Classical era such as al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868 AD/255 AH) and ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 1078 AD/471 AH) among others, examining how their ideologies helped form and maintain a bias against “colloquial” forms of poetry. Their attitudes towards non-classical poetry strike us as what we would now term “elitist”. This would not only lead to their dismissal of non-qaṣīd poetry but also of colloquial varieties as a whole.