hazaj meter

Hazaj meter is a quantitative verse meter frequently found in the epic poetry of the Middle East and western Asia. A musical rhythm of the same name is based on the literary meter.

Hazaj in Arabic poetry

Like the other meters of the ''al-ʿarūḍ'' system of Arabic poetry, the basic rhyme unit of hazaj meter compositions is a closed couplet—a ''bayt'' "distich" (literally "tent")—of two hemistichs known as ''miṣrāʿ''s ("tent flaps").

Characteristic of the hazaj meter (in relation to the other ''al-ʿarūḍ'' meters) is its leading iamb, that is, the first two syllables of its prosodic feet are short-long. This syllable pair (the ''watid'', "peg") is then repeated at fixed points along the length of a line, and two variable syllables (the ''sabab'', "guy-wire"s) are "tied" to each instance of it. The hazaj measure is thus nominally tetrasyllabic. Its two common variations are:
:

In classical Arabic the hazaj is generally used in a dimeter version of four feet. There is also a catalectic version in which the last syllable of the second ''miṣrāʿ'' is omitted. The complete ''bayt'' is as follows ("x" indicates a syllable of variable length):

:u – – x , u – – x , , u – – x , u – – (–)

An example is the qasida of the 10th-century poet Abu Firas al-Hamdani which begins:
:
:
:
:

:
:
:
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:"Greetings, as I come and go, to the girl who lives in the valley;
:love of her is my guide, whenever I visit, and my incentive;
:I love the Bedu because of a gazelle who is seen among them.
:O you who wear that jewellery on your shoulder and neck!"

The hazaj can also be used in dimeter form, as in the follow quatrain attributed to the 7th century Caliph Yazid I:
:
:
:
:

:
:
:
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:, u – – x , u – – x ,

:I am poisoned and I do not have
:any remedy or enchanter.
:Circulate a cup and pass it;
:Ho there, o wine-pourer!

There is a pleasing internal rhyme (''-āqi ... -āqī'') in the second line of the above quatrain. The last two lines, in reverse order, were borrowed by the Persian poet Hafez in his 1st ghazal ''Alā yā ayyoha-s-sāqī''.

The hazaj is one of the less common Arabic meters. It is only very rarely used in early Arabic poetry, and does not occur at all in Stoetzer's collection of 130 8th-century poems, and in fewer than 10 of Vadet's collection of 2300 poems and fragments of Bedouin poetry of the 1st-3rd centuries AD.

The hazaj meter is perhaps also be the base metric of contemporary Arabic ''band'' compositions, but this is uncertain.

Resemblance to ''wāfir''

The hazaj meter may be compared to the ''wāfir'' meter which has the following rhythm, in which u u may be replaced in any foot by a single long syllable:
:u – uu – , u – uu – , u – –

One difference between them is that the ''wāfir'' is quite commonly used in Arabic poetry but never used at all in Persian, Turkish or Urdu. However, in its contracted form, where both pairs of short syllables in a hemistich (half-line) are replaced by a long one, it closely resembles the Persian 11-syllable hazaj:
:u – – – , u – – – , u – –

Hazaj in Hebrew poetry

The first poet to imitate Arabic meters in Hebrew is said to have been Dunash ben Labrat (915-70), who was possibly born in Fez, Morocco but lived in Spain. His most famous poem, the ''D'ror Yikra'', is written in the hazaj meter. It begins as follows:
:
:
:''D'ror yikra l'ven im bat * V'yintsorchem k'mo vavat.''
:''Na'im shimchem velo yushbat * Sh'vu nuchu b'yom Shabbat.''
:"Freedom shall He proclaim for His sons and daughters * and will keep you as the apple of His eye .
:Pleasant is Your name and will not cease to be. * Repose (and) rest on the Sabbath day."

The first letters of each half line in this stanza make up the name "DUNASH".

To make the short syllables of the meter, Dunash generally uses the ''sheva'' half vowel. Occasionally, however, he uses one of the other "short" vowels of Hebrew, as in the word ''na'im'' in the second line, which was presumably pronounced ''n'im''.

Since the 4th syllable of each foot is always long, Dunash's meter rhythmically has much more in common with the 16-syllable Persian hazaj than with Abu Firas's Arabic version quoted above, which frequently uses a short syllable in the 4th position.

Other traditional Jewish hymns, such as '' Adon Olam'', are written in the same meter. However, since the pronunciation of Hebrew no longer distinguishes long and short vowels, the various melodies used for such hymns these days are often in different rhythms that ignore the characteristic u – – – foot of the hazaj.

In Hebrew the hazaj meter is known as , ''ha-mishqal ha-marnin''.

Persian hazaj

The hazaj meter is also represented in Ottoman Turkish, Persian and other Iranian, Urdu

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