How many meters does Arabic poetry have?

Classical Arabic poetry has sixteen meters, called buhur. Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi identified fifteen of them in the eighth century CE, and al-Akhfash al-Awsat later added a sixteenth, al-Mutadarik.

Which Arabic meter is used most?

Tawil is by far the most used in classical Arabic poetry, followed by Kamil and then Basit. In an archive of roughly 79,000 poems, Tawil accounts for 19,778, Kamil for 10,422 and Basit for 9,914 — the three together carry more than half of all classical Arabic verse.

How do I work out the meter of an Arabic poem?

Scansion takes four steps. Write the line phonetically, as it is pronounced rather than as it is spelled; mark each consonant as either moving (followed by a short vowel) or still; match that pattern of marks against the standard feet; then read off which meter has those feet in that order. Experienced readers skip the process by chanting the line against a memorised key verse.

What is the difference between meter and rhyme in Arabic poetry?

The meter is the rhythmic pattern the whole poem runs on, built from repeating feet. The rhyme is the consonant every line of the poem ends on, held from the first line to the last. Meter is the rhythm; rhyme is the closing sound. A poem is described by both at once.

Which Arabic meters are no longer used?

Mudari and Muqtadab are the rarest, to the point that an archive of 79,000 poems contains no example of either. Mutadarik, Madid and Hazaj are the next least used.

The Sixteen Meters of Arabic Poetry, and How to Identify One

Arabic poetry is metrical, and its meters are a closed set: sixteen, and no more. Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi set out fifteen of them in the eighth century CE, and al-Akhfash al-Awsat, a student of his student, later added al-Mutadarik to complete the sixteen. Every classical Arabic poem runs on one of them.

One thing to set aside first. English meter counts stress — the alternating beat of iambic pentameter. Arabic meter counts quantity: the pattern of short and long syllables, regardless of where the emphasis falls. The two systems are not variants of each other, and an ear trained on one does not automatically hear the other.

The second thing worth knowing is that al-Khalil did not invent these patterns and impose them on poets. He described what he found in poetry already centuries old. That is why the sixteen are so wildly uneven in use: one meter carries almost a quarter of all Arabic verse, and two others are effectively empty.

The sixteen meters

Each meter is built from repeating feet, written in Arabic with a mnemonic vocabulary — faʿūlun, mafāʿīlun and their relatives — whose only job is to carry the rhythm in a sayable form. Say the feet aloud and you are saying the meter.

The counts are the number of poems in each meter within an archive of roughly 79,000, which gives a fair picture of how much each was actually used.

Meter	Feet	Poems
Tawil	faʿūlun mafāʿīlun faʿūlun mafāʿilun	19,778
Kamil	mutafāʿilun mutafāʿilun mutafāʿilun	10,422
Basit	mustafʿilun fāʿilun mustafʿilun faʿilun	9,914
Wafir	mufāʿalatun mufāʿalatun faʿūlun	6,676
Khafif	fāʿilātun mustafʿilun fāʿilātun	5,473
Sari	mustafʿilun mustafʿilun fāʿilun	4,527
Mutaqarib	faʿūlun faʿūlun faʿūlun faʿūlun	3,399
Rajaz	mustafʿilun mustafʿilun mustafʿilun	2,435
Munsarih	mustafʿilun mafʿūlātu mustafʿilun	2,189
Ramal	fāʿilātun fāʿilātun fāʿilātun	1,452
Mujtathth	mustafʿilun fāʿilātun	995
Hazaj	mafāʿīlun mafāʿīlun	453
Madid	fāʿilātun fāʿilun fāʿilātun	431
Mutadarik	fāʿilun fāʿilun fāʿilun fāʿilun	54
Mudari	mafāʿīlun fāʿilātun	0
Muqtadab	mafʿūlātu mustafʿilun	0

Which meters are actually used

Tawil, by a wide margin. On its own it approaches a quarter of the archive, and nearly equals the next two combined. The reason is capacity: its length carries a long thought and a sustained breath, which is what the Mu’allaqat poets needed and what everyone writing praise, boasting or elegy needed after them.

Then Kamil, more supple and closer to song, and then Basit. Those three together carry more than half of classical Arabic poetry.

At the far end sit Mudari and Muqtadab, with not one poem between them in this archive. They are theoretical rather than practical meters: al-Khalil recorded them because the system implied them, and poets never took them up. Mutadarik is next in scarcity, and saw little use until relatively late.

How to scan a line

Formal scansion has four steps:

Write the line phonetically, as it sounds rather than as it is spelled. Silent letters drop out; sounds that are pronounced but unwritten go in; a doubled consonant splits into a still consonant followed by a moving one.
Mark each consonant as moving — followed by a short vowel — or still.
Match the marks against the feet, and faʿūlun, mafāʿīlun and the rest will fall out of the row in order.
Read the order of feet off the table above. The meter is whichever one has that sequence.

In practice, experienced readers skip all of it. Each meter has a miftah, a key verse composed in that meter which names it, written by the prosodists precisely so the rhythm could be summoned by chanting. Learn the keys to the first three — Tawil, Kamil, Basit — and you will recognise most of what you meet, because most of what you meet is in them.

Meter, rhyme, theme: three different axes

These get conflated constantly, so it is worth separating them:

Meter is the rhythmic pattern — one of the sixteen above.
Rhyme is the consonant every line ends on, held from first line to last. A poem whose lines all end in lām is a lāmiyya.
Theme is what the poem is about: praise, elegy, satire, love.

A single poem is described by all three at once: a lāmiyya in Tawil, in elegy.

Reading poetry sorted by meter

Meter is one of four axes a poem can be classified on. The other three are rhyme, theme and era, each covered in its own article here.

Most Arabic poetry sites index by poet alone, which leaves no way in if what you want is a particular meter. Qafiyah treats meter as an axis in its own right: every meter has its own page, as do the rhymes, themes and eras. The counts on this page are drawn from it.