Wafir

Wāfir (وَافِر, literally 'numerous, abundant, ample, exuberant') is a meter used in classical Arabic poetry. It is among the five most popular metres of classical Arabic poetry, accounting (alongside ṭawīl, basīṭ, kāmil, and mutaqārib) for 80-90% of lines and poems in the ancient and classical Arabic corpus.[1]

Form

The metre comprises paired hemistichs of the form SLSSL SLSSL SLL / SLSSL SLSSL SLL (where L represents a long syllable, S a short syllable, and where SS can be substituted).[2] Thus, unlike most classical Arabic metres, wāfir allows the poet to substitute one long syllable for two shorts, an example of the prosodic phenomenon of resolution. Thus allows wāfir lines to have different numbers of syllables from each other, a characteristic otherwise only found in kamil and mutadarik.[3]

Wāfir is traditionally represented with the mnemonic (tafā'īl) Mufāʿalatun Mufāʿalatun Faʿūlun (مُفَاعَلَتُنْ مُفاعَلَتُنْ فَعولُنْ).

History

Historically, wāfir perhaps arose, along with ṭawīl and mutaqārib, from hazaj.[4] In the analysis of Salma K. Jayyusi, the 'Umayyad poet Jarir ibn Atiyah used the metre for about a fifth of his work, and at that time 'this metre was still fresh and did not carry echoes of great pre-Islamic poets as did ṭawīl and baṣīt. Wāfir had therefore a great potential for introducing a diction nearer to the spoken language of the Umayyad period.'[5]

The metre, like other Arabic metres, was later borrowed into other poetic traditions. For example, it was adopted in Hebrew, where it is known as hamerubeh[6] and became one of the pre-eminent metres of medieval poetry.[7] In the Arabic and Arabic-influenced vernacular poetry of Sub-Saharan Africa it also features,[8] for example in Fula[9] and Hausa.[10] It also underpins some oral poetic traditions in Palestine today.[11] However, it was not used in Urdu, Turkish, or Persian (or perhaps, rather, it can be said to have merged for linguistic reasons with hazaj).[12]

Examples

The following Arabic epigram by ‘Ulayya bint al-Mahdī is in wāfir metre:[13]

كتمتُ اسم الحبيب من العباد ¦ ورذدتُ الصبابة في فوعادي،
فواشوقي إلى بلدِِ خليّ ¦ لعلّي باسْم مب أهوى أنادي،
katamtu sma l-ḥabībi mina l-‘ibādī | wa-raddadtu ṣ-ṣabābata fī fu’ādī
fa-wā-shawqī ’ilā baladin khaliyyin | la‘allī bi-smi man ’ahwā ’unādī
I have hidden the name of my love from the crowd: | for my passion my heart is the only safe space.
How I long for an empty and desolate place | in order to call my love's name out aloud.

An example of the metre in Fula is the following poem by Ïsa ɓii Usmānu (1817-?):[14]

Kulen Allaahu Mawɗo nyalooma jemma, | Mbaɗen ka salaatu, hooti mbaɗen salaama
He dow ɓurnaaɗo tagle he Aalo’en fuu, | Sahaabo’en he taabi’i, yimɓe himma.
Nufaare nde am mi yusɓoya gimɗi, anndee, | mi woyra ɗi Naana; ɓernde fu firgitaama
He yautuki makko, koowa he anndi juulɓe | mbaɗii hasar haqiiqa, cunninaama.
Let us fear Allah the Great day and night, | let us continually invoke blessing and peace
Upon the best of creatures and all his kinsfolk, | his companions and followers, men of zeal.
Know ye, my intention is to compose verses | and with them to lament for Nāna; every heart is startles
At her passing, everyone knows that the Moslems | have suffered loss indeed, and have been saddened.

References

  1. ↑ Bruno Paoli, 'Generative Linguistics and Arabic Metrics', in Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms: From Language to Metrics and Beyond, ed. by Jean-Louis Aroui, Andy Arleo, Language Faculty and Beyond: Internal and External Variation in Linguistics, 2 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2009), pp. 193-208 (p. 203).
  2. ↑ Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology, trans. by Geert Jan van Gelder (New York: New York University Press, 2013), p. xxiv.
  3. ↑ W. Stoetzer, 'Rajaz', in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. by Julie Scott Meisami, Paul Starkey, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 1998), II 645-46 (p. 646).
  4. ↑ Shawkat M. Toorawa, review of Classical Arabic Humanities in Their Own Terms: Festschrift for Wolfhart Heinrichs on His 65th Birthday Presented by His Students and Colleagues, ed. by Beatrice Gruendler and Michael Cooperson, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 132 (2012), 491-97 (p. 493), DOI: 10.7817/jameroriesoci.132.3.0491.
  5. ↑ Salma K. Jayyusi, 'Umayyad Poetry', in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. by A. F. L. Beeston, T. M. Johnstone, R. B. Serjeant and G. R. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
  6. ↑ Merav Rosenfeld-Hadad, 'Miṣḥaf al-Shbaḥot—The Holy Book of Praises of the Babylonian Jews. One Thousand Years of Cultural Harmony between Judaism and Islam', in The Convergence of Judaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions, ed. by Mikhael M. Laskier and Yaacov Lev (University Press of Florida, 2011), pp. 241-71 (p. 256).
  7. ↑ Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development (New York: Dover, 1992 [repr. from New York: Holt, 1929]), p. 116.
  8. ↑ Abdul-Samad Abdullah , 'Intertextuality and West African Arabic Poetry: Reading Nigerian Arabic Poetry of the 19th and 20th Centuries', Journal of Arabic Literature, 40 (2009), 335-61 (p. 337).
  9. ↑ D. W. Arnott, 'Literature in Fula', in Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical Issues and Sample Surveys, ed. by B. W. Andrzejewski, S. Piłaszewicz and W. Tyloch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 72-96 (84-85).
  10. ↑ J. H. Greenberg, 'Hausa Verse Prosody', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 69 (1949), 125-35 (p. 127), DOI: 10.2307/594988, http://www.jstor.org/stable/594988.
  11. ↑ Nadia Yaqub, 'Towards a Synchronic Metrical Analysis of Oral Palestinian Poetry', Al-'Arabiyya, 36 (2003), 1-26, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43195707.
  12. ↑ Ashwini Deo and Paul Kiparsky, 'Poetries in Contact: Arabic, Persian, and Urdu', http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.308.5139.
  13. ↑ Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology, trans. by Geert Jan van Gelder (New York: New York University Press, 2013), p. 48.
  14. ↑ D. W. Arnott, 'Literature in Fula', in Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical Issues and Sample Surveys, ed. by B. W. Andrzejewski, S. Piłaszewicz and W. Tyloch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 72-96 (84-85).
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