hemistich is half the “Bayt” which, for want of a better word, I
have rendered couplet: this, however, though formally separated
in MSS., is looked upon as one line, one verse; hence a word can
be divided, the former part pertaining to the first and the
latter to the second moiety of the distich. As the Arabs ignore
blank verse, when we come upon a rhymeless couplet we know that
it is an extract from a longer composition in monorhyme. The
Kit’ah is a fragment, either an occasional piece or more
frequently a portion of a Ghazal (ode) or Kasídah (elegy), other
than the Matlá, the initial Bayt with rhyming distichs. The
Ghazal and Kasídah differ mainly in length: the former is
popularly limited to eighteen couplets: the latter begins at
fifteen and is of indefinite number. Both are built upon
monorhyme, which appears twice in the first couplet and ends all
the others, e.g., aa + ba + ca, etc.; nor may the same assonance
be repeated, unless at least seven couplets intervene. In the
best poets, as in the old classic verse of France, the sense must
be completed in one couplet and not run on to a second; and, as
the parts cohere very loosely, separate quotation can generally
be made without injuring their proper effect. A favourite form is
the Rubá’i or quatrain, made familiar to English ears by Mr.
Fitzgerald’s masterly adaptation of Omar-i-Khayyám: the movement
is generally aa + ba, but it also appears as ab + cb, in which
case it is a Kit’ah or fragment. The Murabbá, tetrastichs or four
fold-song, occurs once only in The Nights (vol.i. 98); it is a
succession of double Bayts or of four lined stanzas rhyming aa +
bc + dc + ec: in strict form the first three hemistichs rhyme
with one another only, independently of the rest of the poem, and
the fourth with that of every other stanza, e.g., aa + ab + cb +
db. The Mukhammas, cinquains or pentastichs (Night cmlxiv.),
represents a stanza of two distichs and a hemistich in monorhyme,
the fifth line being the “bob” or burden: each succeeding stanza
affects a new rhyme, except in the fifth line, e.g., aaaab +
ccccb + ddddb and so forth. The Muwwál is a simple popular song
in four to six lines; specimens of it are given in the Egyptian
grammar of my friend the late Dr. Wilhelm Spitta.[FN#444] The
Muwashshah, or ornamented verse, has two main divisions: one
applies to our acrostics in which the initials form a word or
words; the other is a kind of Musaddas, or sextines, which occurs
once only in The Nights (cmlxxxvii.). It consists of three
couplets or six-line strophes: all the hemistichs of the first
are in monorhyme; in the second and following stanzas the three
first hemistichs take a new rhyme, but the fourth resumes the
assonance of the first set and is followed by the third couplet
of No. 1, serving as bob or refrain, e.g., aaaaaa + bbbaaa +
cccaaa and so forth. It is the most complicated of all the
measures and is held to be of Morisco or Hispano-Moorish origin.
Mr. Lane (Lex.) lays down, on the lines of Ibn Khallikan (i. 476,
etc.) and other representative literati, as our sole authortties
for pure Arabic, the precedence in following order. First of all
ranks the Jáhili (Ignoramus) of The Ignorance, the
: these pagans left hemistichs, couplets, pieces and elegies
which once composed a large corpus and which is now mostly
forgotten. Hammád al-Ráwiyah, the Reciter, a man of Persian
descent (ob. A.H. 160=777) who first collected the Mu’allakát,
once recited by rote in a séance before Caliph Al-Walid two
thousand poems of præ-Mohammedan bards.[FN#445] After the Jáhili
stands the Mukhadram or Muhadrim, the “Spurious,” because half
Pagan half Moslem, who flourished either immediately before or
soon after the preaching of Mohammed. The Islámi or full-blooded
Moslem at the end of the first century A.H. ( = 720) began the
process of corruption in language; and, lastly he was followed by
the Muwallad of the second century who fused Arabic with non-Arabic
and in whom purity of diction disappeared.
I have noticed (I § A.) that the versical portion of The Nights
may be distributed into three categories. First are the olden
poems which are held classical by all modern Arabs; then comes
the mediæval poetry, the effusions of that brilliant throng which
adorned the splendid Court of Harun al-Rashid and which ended
with Al-Haríri (ob. A.H. 516); and, lastly, are the various
pièces de circonstance suggested to editors or scribes by the
occasion. It is not my object to enter upon the historical part
of the subject: a mere sketch would have neither value not
interest whilst a finished picture would lead too far: I must be
contented to notice a few of the most famous names.
Of the præ-Islamites we have Ádi bin Zayd al-Ibádi the
“celebrated poet” of Ibn Khallikán (i. 188); Nábighat (the full-grown
) al-Zubyáni who flourished at the Court of Al-Nu’man in AD.
580–602, and whose poem is compared with the
“Suspendeds,”[FN#446] and Al-Mutalammis the “pertinacious”
satirist, friend and intimate with Tarafah of the “Prize Poem.”
About Mohammed’s day we find Imr al-Kays “with whom poetry
began,” to end with Zú al-Rummah; Amrú bin Mádi Karab al-Zubaydi,
Labíd; Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, the father one of the Mu’al-lakah-poets,
and the son author of the Burdah or Mantle-poem (see vol. iv.
115), and Abbás bin Mirdás who lampooned the Prophet and had “his
tongue cut out” i.e. received a double share of booty from Ali.
In the days of Caliph Omar we have Alkamah bin Olátha followed by
Jamíl bin Ma’mar of the Banu Ozrah (ob. A.H. 82), who loved Azzá.
Then came Al-Kuthayyir (the dwarf, ironicè), the lover of
Buthaynah, “who was so lean that birds might be cut to bits with
her bones:” the latter was also a poetess (Ibn Khall. i. 87),
like Hind bint al-Nu’man who made herself so disagreeable to
Al-Hajjáj (ob. A.H. 95) Jarír al-Khatafah, the noblest of the
Islami poets in the first century, is noticed at full length by
Ibn Khallikan (i. 294) together with his rival in poetry and
debauchery, Abú Firás Hammám or Homaym bin Ghalib al-Farazdak,
the Tamími, the Ommiade poet “without whose verse half Arabic
would be lost:”[FN#447] he exchanged satires with Jarír and died
forty days before him (A.H. 110). Another contemporary, forming
the poetical triumvirate of the period, was the debauched
Christian poet Al-Akhtal al-Taghlibi. They were followed by Al-Ahwas
al-Ansári whose witty lampoons banished him to Dahlak
Island in the Red Sea (ob. A.H. 179 = 795); by Bashshár ibn Burd
and by Yúnus ibn Habib (ob. A.H. 182).
The well known names of the Harun-cycle are Al-Asma’i,
rhetorician and poet, whose epic with Antar for hero is not
forgotten (ob. A.H. 216); Isaac of Mosul (Ishak bin Ibrahim of
Persian origin); Al-’Utbi “the Poet” (ob. A.H. 228); Abu al-Abbás
al-Rakáshi; Abu al-Atahiyah, the lover of Otbah; Muslim bin al-Walíd
al-Ansari; Abú Tammám of Tay, compiler of the Hamásah (ob.
A.H. 230), “a Muwallad of the first class” (says Ibn Khallikan i.
392); the famous or infamous Abu Nowás, Abu Mus’ab (Ahmad ibn
Ali) who died in A.H. 242; the satirist Dibil al-Khuzáí (ob. A.H.
246) and a host of others quos nunc perscribere longum est. They
were followed by Al-Bohtori “the Poet” (ob. A.H. 286); the royal
author Abdullah ibn al-Mu’tazz (ob. A.H. 315); Ibn Abbád the
Sahib (ob. A.H. 334); Mansúr al-Halláj the martyred Sufi; the
Sahib ibn Abbad, Abu Faras al-Hamdáni (ob. A.H. 357); Al-Námi
(ob. A.H. 399) who had many encounters with that model Chauvinist
Al-Mutanabbi, nicknamed Al-Mutanabbih (the “wide awake”), killed
A.H. 354; Al-Manázi of Manazjird (ob. 427); Al-Tughrai author of
the Lámiyat al-’Ajam (ob. A.H. 375); Al-Haríri the model
rhetorician (ob. A.H. 516); Al-Hájiri al-Irbili, of Arbela (ob.
A.H. 632); Bahá al-Din al-Sinjari (ob. A.H. 622); Al-Kátib or the
Scribe (ob. A.H. 656); Abdun al-Andalúsi the Spaniard (our xiith
century) and about the same time Al-Náwaji, author of the Halbat
al-Kumayt or “Race course of the Bay horse”—poetical slang for
wine.[FN#448]
Of the third category, the pièces d’occasion, little need be
said: I may refer readers to my notes on the doggrels in vol. ii.
34, 35, 56, 179, 182, 186 and 261; in vol. v. 55 and in vol.
viii. 50.
Having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody, I have
persuaded my friend Dr. Steingass to undertake in the following
pages the subject as far as concerns the poetry of The Nights. He
has been kind enough to collaborate with me from the beginning,
and to his minute lexicographical knowledge I am deeply indebted
for discovering not a few blemishes which would have been “nuts
to the critic.” The learned Arabist’s notes will be highly
interesting to students: mine ( §V.) are intended to give a
superficial and popular idea of the Arab’s verse mechanism.
The principle of Arabic Prosody (called ’Arúz, pattern standard,
or ’Ilm al-’Arúz, science of the ’Arúz), in so far resembles that
of classical poetry, as it chiefly rests on metrical weight, not
on accent, or in other words a verse is measured by short and
long quantities, while the accent only regulates its rhythm. In
Greek and Latin, however, the quantity of the syllables depends
on their vowels, which may be either naturally short or long, or
become long by position, i.e. if followed by two or more
consonants. We all remember from our school-days what a fine
string of rules had to be committed to and kept in memory, before
we were able to scan a Latin or Greek verse without breaking its
neck by tripping over false quantities. In Arabic, on the other
hand, the answer to the question, what is metrically long or
short, is exceedingly simple, and flows with stringent cogency
from the nature of the Arabic Alphabet. This, strictly speaking,
knows only consonants (Harf, pl. Hurúf). The vowels which are
required, in order to articulate the consonants, were at first
not represented in writing at all. They had to be supplied by the
reader, and are not improperly called “motions” (Harakát),
because they move or lead on, as it were, one letter to another.
They are three in number, a (Fathah), i (Kasrah), u (Zammah),
originally sounded as the corresponding English vowels in bat,
bit and butt respectively, but in certain cases modifying their
pronunciation under the influence of a neighbouring consonant.
When the necessity made itself felt to represent them in writing,
especially for the sake of fixing the correct reading of the
Koran, they were rendered by additional signs, placed above or
beneath the consonant, after which they are pronounced, in a
similar way as it is done in some systems of English shorthand. A
consonant followed by a short vowel is called a “moved letter”
(Muharrakah); a consonant without such vowel is called “resting”
or “quiescent” (Sákinah), and can stand only at the end of a
syllable or word.
And now we are able to formulate the one simple rule, which
determines the prosodical quantity in Arabic: any moved letter,
as ta, li, mu, is counted short; any moved letter followed by a
quiescent one, as taf, fun, mus, i.e. any closed syllable
beginning and terminating with a consonant and having a short
vowel between, forms a long quantity. This is certainly a relief
in comparison with the numerous rules of classical Prosody,
proved by not a few exceptions, which for instance in Dr. Smith’s
elementary Latin Grammar fill eight closely printed pages.
Before I proceed to show how from the prosodical unities, the
moved and the quiescent letter, first the metrical elements, then
the feet and lastly the metres are built up, it will be necessary
to obviate a few misunderstandings, to which our mode of
transliterating Arabic into the Roman
character might give rise.
The line::
“Love in my heart they lit and went their ways,” (vol. i. 232)
runs in Arabic:
“Akámú al-wajda fí kalbí wa sárú” (Mac. Ed. i. 179).
Here, according to our ideas, the word akamú would begin with a
short vowel a, and contain two long vowels á and ú; according to
Arabic views neither is the case. The word begins with “Alif,”
and its second syllable ká closes in Alif after Fathah (a), in
the same way, as the third syllable mú closes in the letter Wáw
(w) after Zammah (u).
The question, therefore, arises, what is “Alif.” It is the first
of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, and has through the medium of
the Greek Alpha nominally entered into our alphabet, where it now
plays rather a misleading part. Curiously enough, however, Greek
itself has preserved for us the key to the real nature of the
letter. In Ἀλφα the initial a is preceded by the so called
spiritus lenis (΄), a sign which must be placed in front or at
the top of any vowel beginning a Greek word, and which represents
that slight aspiration or soft breathing almost involuntarily
uttered, when we try to pronounce a vowel by itself. We need not
go far to find how deeply rooted this tendency is and to what
exaggerations it will sometimes lead. Witness the gentleman who,
after mentioning that he had been visiting his “favourite haunts”
on the scenes of his early life, was sympathetically asked, how
the dear old ladies were. This spiritus lends is the silent h of
the French “homme” and the English “honour,” corresponding
exactly to the Arabic Hamzah, whose mere prop the Alif is, when
it stands at the beginning of a word: a native Arabic Dictionary
does not begin with Báb al-Alif (Gate or Chapter of the Alif),
but with Báb al-Hamzah. What the Greeks call Alpha and have
transmitted to us as a name for the vowel a, is in fact nothing
else but the Arabic Hamzah-Alif,(~)moved by Fathah, i.e. bearing
the sign(~) for a at the top (~), just as it might have the sign
Zammah (~) superscribed to express u (~), or the sign Kasrah (~)
subjoined to represent i(~). In each case the Hamzah-Alif,
although scarcely audible to our ear, is the real letter and
might fitly be rendered in transliteration by the above mentioned
silent h, wherever we make an Arabic word begin with a vowel not
preceded by any other sign. This latter restriction refers to the
sign ’, which in Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Nights,
as frequently in books published in this country, is used to
represent the Arabic letter ~ in whose very name ’Ayn it occurs.
The ’Ayn is “described as produced by a smart compression of the
upper part of the windpipe and forcible emission of breath,”
imparting a guttural tinge to a following or preceding vowel-sound;
but it is by no means a mere guttural vowel, as Professor
Palmer styles it. For Europeans, who do not belong to the
Israelitic dispensation, as well as for Turks and Persians, its
exact pronunciation is most difficult, if not impossible to
acquire.
In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of
scanning poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep
in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel.
Where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character would
make this appear to be the case, either Hamzah (silent h), or
’Ayn (represented by the sign’) is the real initial, and the only
element to be taken in account as a letter. It follows as a self-evident
corollary that wherever a single consonant stands between
two vowels, it never closes the previous syllable, but always
opens the next one. Our word “Akámu,” for instance, can only be
divided into the syllables: A (properly Ha)-ká-mú, never into
Ak-á-mú or Ak-ám-ú.
It has been stated above that the syllable ká is closed by the
letter Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable mú is
closed by the letter Wáw, and I may add now, as the word fí is
closed by the letter Yá (y). To make this perfectly clear, I must
repeat that the Arabic Alphabet, as it was originally written,
deals only with consonants. The signs for the short vowel-sounds
were added later for a special purpose, and are generally not
represented even in printed books, e.g. in the various editions
of The Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or poetical
passages are provided with the vowel-points. But among those
consonants there are three, called weak letters (Hurúf
al-illah), which have a particular organic affinity to these
vowel sounds: the guttural Hamzah, which is akin to a, the
palatal Yá, which is related to i, and the labial Wáw, which is
homogeneous with u. Where any of the weak letters follows a vowel
of its own class, either at the end of a word or being itself
followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens the
preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of
prolongation (Harf al-Madd). Thus, bearing in mind that the
Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable ká might be written
kah, similarly to the German word “sah,” where the h is not
pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound to the a. In
like manner mú and fí are written in Arabic muw and fiy
respectively, and form long quantities not because they contain a
vowel long by nature, but because their initial “Muharrakah” is
followed by a “Sákinah,” exactly as in the previously mentioned
syllables taf, fun, mus.[FN#449] In the Roman transliteration,
Akámú forms a word of five letters, two of which are consonants,
and three vowels; in Arabic it represents the combination
H(a)k(a)hm(u)w, consisting also of five letters but all
consonants, the intervening vowels being expressed in writing
either merely by superadded external signs, or more frequently
not at all. Metrically it represents one short and two long
quantities (U - -), forming in Latin a trisyllable foot, called
Bacchíus, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral “Rukn” (pillar) or “Juz”
(part, portion), the technical designation for which we shall
introduce presently.
There is one important remark more to be made with regard to the
Hamzah: at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive,
Hamzat al-Wasl, or disjunctive, Hamzat al-Kat’. The difference is
best illustrated by reference to the French so-called aspirated
h, as compared with the above-mentioned silent h. If the latter,
as initial of a noun, is preceded by the article, the article
loses its vowel, and, ignoring the silent h altogether, is read
with the following noun almost as one word: le homme becomes
l’homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes l’ami. This
resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl. If, on the other
hand, a French word begins with an aspirated h, as for instance
héros, the article does not drop its vowel before the noun, nor
is the h sounded as in the English word “hero,” but the effect of
the aspirate is simply to keep the two vowel sounds apart, so as
to pronounce le éros with a slight hiatus between, and this is
exactly what happens in the case of the Arabic Hamzah Kat’.
With regard to the Wasl, however, Arabic goes a step further than
French. In the French example, quoted above, we have seen it is
the silent h and the preceding vowel which are eliminated; in
Arabic both the Hamzah and its own Harakah, i.e. the short vowel
following it, are supplanted by their antecedent. Another example
will make this clear. The most common instance of the Hamzah Wasl
is the article al (for h(a)l=the Hebrew hal), where it is moved
by Fathah. But it has this sound only at the beginning of a
sentence or speech, as in “Al-Hamdu” at the head of the Fatihah,
or in “Alláhu” at the beginning of the third Surah. If the two
words stand in grammatical connection, as in the sentence “Praise
be to God,” we cannot say “Al-Hamdu li-Alláhi,” but the junction
(Wasl) between the dative particle li and the noun which it
governs must take place. According to the French principle, this
junction would be effected at the cost of the preceding element
and li Alláhi would become l’Alláhí; in Arabic, on the contrary,
the kasrated l of the particle takes the place of the following
fathated Hamzah and we read li ’lláhi instead. Proceeding in the
Fatihah we meet with the verse “Iyyáka na’budu wa iyyáka
nasta’ínu,” Thee do we worship and of Thee do we ask aid. Here
the Hamzah of iyyáka (properly hiyyáka with silent h) is
disjunctive, and therefore its pronunciation remains the same at
the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, or, to put it
differently, instead of coalescing with the preceding wa into
wa’yyáka, the two words are kept separate by the Hamzah, reading
wa iyyáka, just as it was the case with the French Le héros.
If the conjunctive Hamzah is preceded by a quiescent letter, this
takes generally Kasrah: “Tálat al-Laylah,” the night was
longsome, would become Tálati ’l-Laylah. If, however, the
quiescent letter is one of prolongation, it mostly drops out
altogether, and the Harakah of the next preceding letter becomes
the connecting vowel between the two words, which in our parlance
would mean that the end vowel of the first word is shortened
before the elided initial of the second. Thus “fí al-bayti,” in
the house, which in Arabic is written f(i)y h(a)l-b(a)yt(i) and
which we transliterate fí ’l-bayti, is in poetry read fil-bayti,
where we must remember that the syllable fil, in spite of its
short vowel, represents a long quantity, because it consists of a
moved letter followed by a quiescent one. Fíl would be overlong
and could, according to Arabic prosody, stand only in certain
cases at the end of a verse, i.e. in pause, where a natural
tendency prevails to prolong a sound.
The attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodical value
of the line quoted above with unerring security. For metrical
purposes it syllabifies into: A-ká-mul-vaj-da fí kal-bí wa sá-rú,
containing three short and eight long quantities. The initial
unaccented a is short, for the same reason why the syllables da
and wa are so, that is, because it corresponds to an Arabic
letter, the Hamzah or silent h, moved by Fathah. The syllables
ká, fí, bí, sá, rú are long for the same reason why the syllables
mul, waj, kal are so, that is, because the accent in the
transliteration corresponds to a quiescent Arabic letter,
following a moved one. The same simple criterion applies to the
whole list, in which I give in alphabetical order the first lines
and the metre of all the poetical pieces contained in the Mac.
edition, and which will be found at the end of this volume. {This
appendix is not included in the electronic text}
The prosodical unities, then, in Arabic are the moved and the
quiescent letter, and we are now going to show how they combine
into metrical elements, feet, and metres.
i. The metrical elements (Usúl) are:
1. The Sabab,[FN#450] which consists of two letters and is
either khafíf (light) or sakíl (heavy). A moved letter followed
by a quiescent, i.e. a closed syllable, like the afore-mentioned
taf, fun, mus, to which we may now add fá=fah, ’í=’iy, ’ú=’uw,
form a Sabab khafíf, corresponding to the classical long quantity
(-). Two moved letters in succession, like mute, ’ala, constitute
a Sabab sakíl, for which the classical name would be Pyrrhic (U
U). As in Latin and Greek, they are equal in weight and can
frequently interchange, that is to say, the Sabab khafíf can be
evolved into a sakíl by moving its second Harf, or the latter
contracted into the former, by making its second letter
quiescent.
2. The Watad, consisting of three letters, one of which is
quiescent. If the quiescent follows the two moved ones, the Watad
is called majmú’ (collected or joined), as fa’ú (=fa’uw), mafá
(=mafah), ’ilun, and it corresponds to the classical Iambus (U -
). If, on the contrary, the quiescent intervenes or separates
between the two moved letters, as in fá’i ( = fah’i), látu
(=lahtu), taf’i, the Watad is called mafrúk (separated), and has
its classical equivalent in the Trochee (- U)
3. The Fásilah,[FN#451] containing four letters, i.e.
three moved ones followed by a quiescent, and which, in fact, is
only a shorter name for a Sabab sakíl followed by a Sabab khafíf,
as mute + fá, or ’ala + tun, both of the measure of the classical
Anapaest (U U -)