Arabic prosody

ʿArūḍ (Arabic: اَلْعَرُوض, al-ʿarūḍ) or ʿilm al-ʿarūḍ (عِلم العَروض) 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 (Arabic: عِلْم اَلشِّعْر, ʿilm aš-šiʿr). Its laws were laid down by Al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī (d. 786), an early Arab lexicographer and philologist. In his book Al-ʿArḍ (Arabic: العرض), which is no longer extant, he described 15 types of meter. Later Al-Akhfash al-Akbar described a 16th meter, the mustadārik.^[1]

Following al-Khalil, the Arab prosodists scan poetry not in terms of syllables^[2] but in terms of vowelled and unvowelled letters, which were combined into larger units known as watid or watad "peg" (pl. awtād) and sabab "cord" (pl. asbāb). These larger units make up feet (rukn, pl. arkān).

Western prosodists, on the other hand, usually analyse the meters in terms of syllables, which can be long (–), short (u) and anceps (x), 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 (85-90%) of early classical Arabic poetry is composed in just four meters: the ṭawīl (which is the most common), the kāmil, the wāfir and the basīṭ.^[3]

Rhyme is an important part of classical Arabic poetry.^[4] Almost all Arabic poetry is composed in couplets and the same rhyme is used in the second half of each couplet throughout the poem.