the former case Rajaz is held by some authorities, as Al-Akhfash (Sa’id ibn Masadah), to be mere prose.  Although Labid and Antar composed in iambics, the first Kasidah or regular poem in Rajaz was by Al-Aghlab al-Ajibi temp.  Mohammed:  the Alfiyah-grammar of Ibn Malik is in Rajaz Muzdawij, the hemistichs rhyming and the assonance being confined to the couplet.  Al-Hariri also affects Rajaz in the third and fifth Assemblies.  So far Arabic metre is true to Nature:  in impassioned speech the movement of language is iambic:  we say “I will, I will,” not “I will.”

For many generations the Sons of the Desert were satisfied with Nature’s teaching; the fine perceptions and the nicely trained ear of the bard needing no aid from art.  But in time came the inevitable prosodist under the formidable name of Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Khalil, i.  Ahmad, i.  Amru, i.  Tamim al-Farahidi (of the Farahid sept), al-Azdi (of the Azd clan), al Yahmadi (of the Yahmad tribe), popularly known as Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Basri, of Bassorah, where he died aet. 68, scanning verses they say, in A.H. 170 (= 786-87).  Ibn Khallikan relates (i. 493) on the authority of Hamzah al-Isfahani how this “father of Arabic grammar and discoverer of the rules of prosody” invented the science as he walked past a coppersmith’s shop on hearing the strokes of a hammer upon a metal basin:  “two objects devoid of any quality which could serve as a proof and an illustration of anything else than their own form and shape and incapable of leading to any other knowledge than that of their own nature."[FN#435] According to others he was passing through the Fullers’ Bazar at Basrah when his ear was struck by the Dak dak (Arabic letters) and the Dakak-dakak (Arabic letters) of the workmen.  In these two onomapoetics we trace the expression which characterises the Arab tongue:  all syllables are composed of consonant and vowel, the latter long or short as B and B ; or of a vowelled consonant followed by a consonant as Bal, Bau (Arabic) .

The grammarian, true to the traditions of his craft which looks for all poetry to the Badawi,[FN#436] adopted for metrical details the language of the Desert.  The distich, which amongst Arabs is looked upon as one line, he named “Bayt,” nighting-place, tent or house; and the hemistich Misra’ah, the one leaf of a folding door.  To this “scenic” simile all the parts of the verse were more or less adapted.  The metres, our feet, were called “Arkan,” the stakes and stays of the tent; the syllables were “Usul” or roots divided into three kinds:  the first or “Sabab” (the tent-rope) is composed of two letters, a vowelled and a quiescent consonant as “Lam."[FN#437] The “Watad” or tent peg of three letters is of two varieties; the Majmu’, or united, a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by vowels and the last is jazmated or made quiescent by apocope as “Lakad”; and the Mafruk, or disunited, when the two moved consonants are separated by one jazmated, as “Kabla.”  And lastly the “Fasilah” or intervening space, applied to the main pole of the tent, consists of four letters.