A Beit (also spelled bait, ar, بيت , literally "a

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air ...

") is a metrical unit of

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

and Sindhi poetry. It corresponds to a

line Line most often refers to: * Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity * Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to: Art ...

, though sometimes improperly renderered as " couplet" since each ''beit'' is divided into two

hemistich A hemistich (; via Latin from Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin and Greek poetry, the hemistich is generally confined ...

s of equal length, each containing two, three or four feet, or from 16 to 32 syllables."Arabian Poetry for English Readers," by William Alexander Clouston (1881)
p. 379
in

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

William Alexander Clouston William Alexander Clouston (1843 – 23 October 1896) was a Scottish 19th century folklorist from Orkney.

concluded that this fundamental part of Arabic prosody originated with the

Bedouins The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...

or Arabs of the desert, as, in the nomenclature of the different parts of the line, one foot is called "a tent-pole", another "tent-peg" and the two

s of the verse are called after the folds or leaves of the double-door of the tent or "house". Through

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish ( ota, لِسانِ عُثمانى, Lisân-ı Osmânî, ; tr, Osmanlı Türkçesi) was the standardized register of the Turkish language used by the citizens of the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed exten ...

, it got into Albanian and the bards of Muslim tradition in the

Albanian literature Albanian literature stretches back to the Middle Ages and comprises those literary texts and works written in Albanian. It may also refer to literature written by Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian diaspora particularly in Italy. A ...

took their name after this metrical unit, the poets known as

bejtexhi The Bejtexhinj (in Albanian sing. ''bejtexhi'', pl. ''bejtexhinj''; from tr, beyte meaning "poem"), were popular bards of the Muslim tradition, literally meaning " couplet makers". It means the same in the Albanian literature, firstly muslim po ...

, meaning literally meaning "couplet makers".

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Poetic rhythm Arabic and Central Asian poetics Indian poetics Sindhi folklore Urdu-language poetry Islamic poetry Albanian poetry