al-Arud

al-Arud (Kitab al-Arud) is a treatise on Arabic prosody composed by the grammarian and philologist Abu al-Fath Uthman ibn Jinni (d. 392 AH / 1002 CE) Hadiyat al-Arifin Asma al…+1. The work provides a systematic exposition of the classical Arabic poetic metres, their foundational units, variations, and rules of scansion al-Arud+1.

Foundations and Terminology

Ibn Jinni opens the work by defining prosody (al-arud) as the scale of Arabic poetry (mizan shi'r al-Arab), by which metrically sound lines are distinguished from broken ones al-Arud. He establishes that poetic composition is fundamentally measured by the correspondence of vocalized (mutaharrik) and quiescent (sakin) consonants to the established patterns of Arabic verse al-Arud.

The treatise outlines the elementary metrical segments from which poetic feet are constructed:

• Causes (sabab): divided into light (khafif, a vocalized consonant followed by a quiescent one, such as hal and qad) and heavy (thaqil, two consecutive vocalized consonants, such as ma'a and laka) al-Arud.
• Pegs (watid): divided into conjoint (majmu', two vocalized consonants followed by a quiescent one, such as ajal and na'am) and disjoint (mafruq, two vocalized consonants separated by a quiescent one, such as ayna and laysa) al-Arud.
• Intervals (fasilah): divided into minor (saghirah, three vocalized consonants followed by a quiescent one, such as darabat) and major (kabirah, four vocalized consonants followed by a quiescent one, such as darabata) al-Arud+1.

Ibn Jinni notes the foundational rule of prosodic notation (taqti'): scansion reflects spoken phonetic realization (al-lafz) rather than written orthography (al-khatt), counting every pronounced letter and omitting unpronounced ones al-Arud.

He identifies eight primary metrical feet (ajza' al-taf'il): six heptaconsonantal feet (mafa'ilun, fa'ilatun, mustaf'ilun, mufa'alatun, mutafa'ilun, and maf'ulat) and two pentaconsonantal feet (fa'ulun and fa'ilun) al-Arud. The text also defines key structural positions in a verse, designating the final foot of the first hemistich as the arud and the concluding foot of the entire verse as the darb al-Arud.

Classification and Metrical Structure

The book arranges the entire corpus of Arabic poetry into fifteen metres distributed across five metrical circles (dawa'ir), containing a total of 34 distinct arud endings and 63 darb varieties al-Arud:

1. The first circle comprises al-Tawil, al-Madid, and al-Basit al-Arud.
2. The second circle comprises al-Wafir and al-Kamil al-Arud.
3. The third circle comprises al-Hazaj, al-Rajaz, and al-Raml al-Arud.
4. The fourth circle comprises al-Sari', al-Munsarih, al-Khafif, al-Mudari', al-Muqtadab, and al-Mujtathth al-Arud.
5. The fifth circle contains al-Mutaqarib alone al-Arud.

Method and Content

The body of the book treats each metre in an individual chapter (beginning with Bab al-Tawil, Bab al-Madid, and Bab al-Basit) al-Arud+2. For each metre, Ibn Jinni details:

• The standard arrangement and number of feet in both full and catalectic or curtailed (majzu') forms al-Arud+1.
• The valid permutations of arud and darb patterns (such as intact, maqbud, mahdhuf, maqsur, or makhbun) al-Arud+2.
• Attested evidentiary verses (shawahid) illustrating each variant, accompanied by explicit scansion layouts (taqti') and examples of hemistich rhyming (tasri') al-Arud+2.
• The permissible metrical relaxations and irregularities (zihaf), including contractions such as qabd, thalm, tharm, kaff, khabn, and shakl, as well as rules governing mutual exclusion (mu'aqabah) between adjacent feet al-Arud+1.