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 condi ...

") is a metrical unit of Arabic, Iranian, 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: Arts ...

, though sometimes improperly renderered as "

couplet A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...

" since each ''beit'' is divided into two hemistichs 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 William Alexander Clouston concluded that this fundamental part of Arabic prosody originated with the Bedouins or Arabs of the

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

, as, in the nomenclature of the different parts of the line, one foot is called "a tent-pole", another "tent-peg" and the two hemistichs 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 extens ...

, it got into

Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...

and the

bard In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise t ...

s of Muslim tradition in the Albanian literature took their name after this metrical unit, the poets known as bejtexhi, 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