Songs and Music have been part of thw local culture of the Yoruba from antiquity. Religious poetry, particularly the one associated wity local deities, and professional or ceremonial poetry had been a common phenomenon before the advent of Islam in the15th/16th cent. Yoruba traditional poetry was essentially oral, so the Islamic version of it could not have been otherwise. But once Arabic became the first language of literacy known to the Yoruba from around the beginning of the 19thcent, Yoruba Islamic verse, and indeed other aspects of mundane life, viz, medicinal recipes, local documents started to be documented in Yoruba using the Arabic script. For about two decades now, I have been collecting data in thius regard and my presentation at the Conference will deal with 1- Factors that inspired the emergenceof Yoruba Islamic verse. 2- the problem of transcription, as there is no standard orthography of Yoruba in Arabic script. 3- the peculiar structure of waka in terms of subject matter, language, technique of thematic distribution and transition among others. The oldest Yoruba Islamic verse in Arabic script is that by Badamosi Agbaji (d.circa 1891) from Ilorin. My paper will use it as a basis for the study of the genre in relation to productions by others from other parts of Yoruba land, especially, the Ibadan-Oyo axis. The ultimate aim is to study the characteristics of the genre within the context of new innovations that have since crept in modern times.