Arabic prosody


ʿArūḍ is the study of poetic meters, which identifies the meter of a poem and determines whether the meter is sound or broken in lines of the poem. It is often called the Science of Poetry. Its laws were laid down by Al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, an early Arab lexicographer and philologist. In his book Al-ʿArḍ, which is no longer extant, he described 15 types of meter. Later Al-Akhfash al-Akbar described a 16th meter, the mutadārik.
Following al-Khalil, the Arab prosodists scan poetry not in terms of syllables but in terms of vowelled and unvowelled letters, which were combined into larger units known as watid or watad "peg" and sabab "cord". These larger units make up feet.
Western prosodists, on the other hand, usually analyse the meters in terms of syllables, which can be long, short and anceps, that is, a syllable which can be optionally long or short. Certain meters also have biceps positions where a pair of short syllables can optionally be replaced by a long one.
The great majority of early classical Arabic poetry is composed in just four meters: the ṭawīl, the kāmil, the wāfir and the basīṭ.
Rhyme is an important part of classical Arabic poetry. Almost all Arabic poetry is composed in couplets and the same rhyme is used in the second half of each couplet throughout the poem.

Meters

The feet of an Arabic poem are traditionally represented by mnemonic words called tafāʿīl. In most poems there are eight of these: four in the first half of the verse and four in the second; in other cases, there will be six of them, meaning three in the first half of the verse and three in the second.
The buḥūr , identified according to the traditional method, are the following. Underneath each meter is its scansion by the European method, where – = a long syllable, u = a short syllable, x = either long or short, uu = 1 long or two shorts.
The meters most commonly used are those of circles 1 and 2. Those meters marked with an asterisk are mainly theoretical, and in practice rarely used by poets.

Circle 1

Circle 2

Circle 3

Circle 4

Circle 5

Sequences of three short syllables are not found in any Arabic meter, except occasionally in a variation of the rajaz meter, in which | x – u – | may sometimes be replaced by | x u u – |.

Frequency of the meters

Analysis of anthologies of classical Arabic poetry shows that some of these meters are much more common than others. The most common meter by far in early poetry is the ṭawīl; the kāmil, wāfir, and basīṭ are also fairly common; the rajaz/sarīʿ and the mutaqārib occur occasionally; and the others are rarely found.
Thus in Vadet's corpus of Bedouin poetry of the 1st–3rd century AD, containing nearly 2,300 poems and fragments, 50% of the poems are in the ṭawīl, 18% in the kāmil, 14% in the wāfir, and 11% in the basīṭ. The rajaz/sarī' make 3%, mutaqārib 2.4%, and all the rest together about 2%.
In Stoetzer's corpus of 130 poems of the 8th century, 35% are in the ṭawīl, 20% in kāmil, 14% in wāfir, 13% in basīṭ, 3% in rajaz/sarīʿ, 7% in mutaqārib, and the rest about 6%.
Among the 1385 short poems included in the Arabian Nights, 24% are ṭawīl, 24% basīṭ, 23% kāmil, 10% wāfir, 2% ramal, 2% rajaz, 5% xafīf, 4% sarīʿ, 1% munsarih, 1% mujtatt, and 3% mutaqārib. The madīd and the hazaj almost never occur, and the mutadārik, muḍāri', and muqtaḍab to not occur at all. These last three were usually regarded as artificial meters, not used in real poetry.

Al-Khalil's terminology

Al-Khalil was primarily a grammarian and using the grammatical terminology of his day he made use of the terms ḥarf mutaḥarrik "mobile letter" and ḥarf sākin "quiescent letter" to build up larger prosodic units, which he called "peg" and "cord" or "guy-rope". In European descriptions, these are conventionally abbreviated "P" and "K" respectively. A "peg" is a sequence of two syllables, usually short + long ; but occasionally in the rarely used metres of circle 4, long + short . A "cord" is a short syllable, long syllable, or two shorts. Surprisingly, al-Khalil's system makes no use of the concept of the syllable as such.
The watid is repeated at fixed points along the line and is generally unchanging, while the asbāb or cords are the syllables in between which could be modified. A peg and either one or two cords makes a rukn "tent pole or support" or what in European terms is called a foot. Thus a half-line of the ṭawīl metre is analysed as PK PKK PK PKK. A complete line of poetry usually consists of either six or eight feet, but sometimes shorter lines are found.
When analysing a verse, an Arab prosodist begins by rewriting the line phonetically, that is, as it is actually pronounced. Doubled letters are written twice and silent letters, such as the alif of the article when it follows a vowel, are omitted. Thus the word اَلْكَرِيم, al-karīm in ʿarūḍ writing is written phonetically as "لكريم". In a word like al-shams, where the "l" of the article is assimilated to the first consonant of the noun, the actual sound is written instead; so in ʿarūḍ writing, this is written ششمس. Then each mobile letter is represented by a vertical line, known as mutaḥarrik, and each quiescent letter by a small circle, known as sukūn. Thus a watid will be represented in the scansion by two mutaḥarrik symbols and one sukūn.
A line of poetry, known as a bayt, is composed of two half-lines, each of which is known as a miṣrāʿ. The first half-line is called the ṣadr, and the other is called the ʿajuz. The ṣadr and the ʿajuz have two parts each:
The last consonant of the ḍarb and the vowel that comes after it are called the rawiyy and its last two sākins, all the mutaḥarrik letters that are in between, and the last mutaḥarrik before them, is called the qāfīyah or 'rhyme'.

Al-Khalil's circles

Khalil noticed that the metres can be divided into different groups. If a meter is written out in a circle, then by starting in different places on the circle it is possible to derive the other meters of the same group. Expressed in terms of syllables rather than Khalil's silent and moving letters, the different circles can be tabulated as follows. The columns marked P are the "pegs", while between each peg and the next are either one or two "cords". The order of metres is the one traditionally used by poets such as Al-Maʿarri, who arranged his poems not only by rhyme by also metrically.
CircleMeterPPPPPP
1Ṭawīl
Madīd
Basīṭ		u –

x
x
u –
u –
x x
x x
x x		u –
u –
u –		x
x
x		u –
u –
u –		x x
x x
x x
u –
u –

x

u –
2Wāfir
Kāmil		u –
xx x
xx x		u –
u –		xx x
xx x		u –
u –		xx x
xx x		u –
u –		xx x
xx x
u –
3Hazaj
Rajaz
Ramal		u –

x x
x x
x		u –
u –
u –		x x
x x
x x		u –
u –
u –		x x
x x
x x		u –
u –
u –		x x
x x
x x
u –
u –

x
4Sarīʿ
Munsariħ
Khafīf
  • Muḍāriʿ
  • Muqtaḍab
Mujtathth
x x




u –




x x
x x
x


u –
u –
u –
u –

x x
x x
x x
x x
x x
x		– u
– u
– u
– u
– u
– u
x x
x x
x x
x x
x x
u –
u –
u –
u –
u –

x
x x
x x
x x



u –
u –




x
5Mutaqārib
  • Mutadārik
u – x
x		u –
u –		x
x		u –
u –		x
x		u –
u –		x
x
u –

Meters in the same circle have similar features. For example, the meters in circle 1 all make use of feet of 3 syllables alternating with feet of 4 syllables. Both meters in circle 2 make use of biceps elements, in which a pair of short syllables can be replaced by a long one ; meters of circle 4 all have one place in the hemistich where the watid is a trochee instead of an iamb ; the meters of circle 5 have short feet of PK PK or KP KP.
The above meters are given in their tetrameter form, but some are generally found with only three feet per hemistich.
As Stoetzer points out, the anceps syllables in tables such as the above are in many cases not really anceps, but merely an abstraction to make it seem that two different meters belong to the same circle. For example, the penultimate syllable of the Ṭawīl in practice is always short, while the corresponding syllable in Basīṭ is always long.

Variations

Variations of these meters can be found. Some exist in shorter or longer forms, for example with either three or four feet in each half-line. Some meters have a catalectic variation, in which the end of the line is shortened by one syllable.
A whole series of Arabic technical terms exists to describe these variations. Minor variations which affect the cords only are known as ziḥāfāt ; major variations which affect the beginning or end of a line are known as ʿilal. There are 14 possible ziḥāfāt and 34 possible ʿilal.
For example, if the foot mustafʿilun is replaced by mafāʿilun, it is said to be maxbūn, that is, it has undergone the ziḥāf known as xabn "hemming" or "shortening".
If the line-ending mustafʿilun is replaced by mustafʿil that is, if the line is catalectic, the meter is said to be maqṭūʿ, that is, it has undergone the ʿilla known as qaṭʿ "cutting" or "curtailment".
A full description of all the ziḥāfāt and ʿilal is given in Elwell-Sutton, pp. 13–39.

Minor rules of prosody

There are a number of prosodic conventions which are observed in writing and scanning Arabic poetry, of which the following are the most important: