How does scansion work in Arabic poetry?

Question

I was reading about Arabic poetry on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_poetry), and specifically the description of scansion: > The rhymed poetry falls within fifteen different meters collected and explained by al-Farahidi in *The Science of ‘Arud*. Al-Akhfash, a student of al-Farahidi, later added one more meter to make them sixteen. The meters of the rhythmical poetry are known in Arabic as "seas" (*buḥūr*). The measuring unit of seas is known as "*taf‘īlah*", and every sea contains a certain number of taf'ilas which the poet has to observe in every verse (*bayt*) of the poem. The measuring procedure of a poem is very rigorous. Sometimes adding or removing a consonant or a vowel can shift the *bayt* from one meter to another. Also, in rhymed poetry, every *bayt* has to end with the same rhyme (*qāfiyah*) throughout the poem. This confused me for a number of reasons. - What does it mean to have fifteen different meters? Meter in poetry is the overall rhythmic structure; are the fifteen different things actually [feet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(prosody))? - Is "seas" really just another word for meter, or is there some significant difference between the "seas" of Arabic poetry and the meter of western poetry? - Since seas are made up of taf'ilahs, does that mean it's a *taf'ilah* which is basically a foot? I've looked for a better description of this, but searching for "seas arabic poetry" just gave me a list of results which were essentially identical to the above-quoted Wikipedia page. Is there a better resource for learning about the scansion structure of Arabic poetry? **What are the basics of how scansion works in Arabic poetry?** -

Answer 1

So regarding the meters, there are in fact 15 different meters of Arabic poetry. You might be wondering how this is possible. Basically, meters in Arabic work a bit different from meters in Western poetry. If a poem in English is written in iambic pentameter, for example, that means every foot has the same structure---[buh DUM] (two syllables, stress on the last syllable).

In Arabic, you can combine feet (taf'ilahs) with different structures in the same line. So you could have a line with the feet [buh buh DUM][BUH buh dum][buh BUH dum] (this is just an example, and Arabic poetry is actually weight-based rather than stress based, so instead of stressed and unstressed syllables, the lines would consist of heavy and light syllables). I hope this helps!