THE DOMINANT METRE "BAḤR" IN THE MUSICAL COMPOSITION OF THE POETRY OF THE ṬAYYʾ POETS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18623/rvd.v23.6840Keywords:
Arabic Prosody, Poetic Metres, Tayy Tribe Poetry, Pre-Islamic and Islamic Poetry, Metrical Structure and MusicalityAbstract
This study examines the poetic metres that dominated the literary output of the Tayy tribe and demonstrates how these metres shaped the musical and semantic identity of their texts throughout the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. The study adopted a descriptive-analytical approach, combined with statistical analysis, of a body of poetry comprising 612 texts, including poems, pieces, fragments, and isolated verses. The analysis comprised 3,203 poetic lines to determine the distribution of metre among the tribe’s poets. The results revealed a clear predominance of the ‘Tawil’ metre in the tribe’s output, accounting for approximately 46.6% of the texts and 48.6% of the verses, followed by the ‘Wafir’, ‘Rajaz’, ‘Basit’ and ‘Kamil’ metres in lesser proportions, whilst certain metres (such as the ‘Majth’, ‘Hazj’ and ‘Mukhtazib’) were rare or absent. This distribution indicates a preference for long and complete metres, which affords the poet narrative scope and permits moods of pride, enthusiasm, lamentation, and epic narration. Metrical and functional analysis also revealed the prevalence of al-‘ull and al-zahafat, as musical devices that justify changes in rhythm for expressive purposes by slowing down or speeding up the timing of the moving syllables, thereby serving the meaning and reflecting the fusion of music with the poet’s psychological and mental state, thus playing an intellectual and auditory role in the text. The research also noted a change in the form of texts between the two eras, with a growing tendency towards short pieces and fragments in the Islamic era, as opposed to the predominance of long poems in the pre-Islamic era. The research demonstrated the dominance of metrical patterns, particularly the long metre, in shaping the musicality of the Tayy tribe's poetry and highlighted that prosodic structure is not merely a rigid formal framework but an effective semantic tool for constructing poetic sensibility and tribal identity.
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