Having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody, I have persuaded my friend Dr. Steingass to undertake in the following pages the subject as far as concerns the poetry of The Nights.  He has been kind enough to collaborate with me from the beginning, and to his minute lexicographical knowledge I am deeply indebted for discovering not a few blemishes which would have been “nuts to the critic.”  The learned Arabist’s notes will be highly interesting to students:  mine ( SectionV.) are intended to give a superficial and popular idea of the Arab’s verse mechanism.

“The principle of Arabic Prosody (called ’Aruz, pattern standard, or ’Ilm al-’Aruz, science of the ’Aruz), in so far resembles that of classical poetry, as it chiefly rests on metrical weight, not on accent, or in other words a verse is measured by short and long quantities, while the accent only regulates its rhythm.  In Greek and Latin, however, the quantity of the syllables depends on their vowels, which may be either naturally short or long, or become long by position, i.e. if followed by two or more consonants.  We all remember from our school-days what a fine string of rules had to be committed to and kept in memory, before we were able to scan a Latin or Greek verse without breaking its neck by tripping over false quantities.  In Arabic, on the other hand, the answer to the question, what is metrically long or short, is exceedingly simple, and flows with stringent cogency from the nature of the Arabic Alphabet.  This, strictly speaking, knows only consonants (Harf, pl.  Huruf).  The vowels which are required, in order to articulate the consonants, were at first not represented in writing at all.  They had to be supplied by the reader, and are not improperly called “motions” (Harakat), because they move or lead on, as it were, one letter to another.  They are three in number, a (Fathah), i (Kasrah), u (Zammah), originally sounded as the corresponding English vowels in bat, bit and butt respectively, but in certain cases modifying their pronunciation under the influence of a neighbouring consonant.  When the necessity made itself felt to represent them in writing, especially for the sake of fixing the correct reading of the Koran, they were rendered by additional signs, placed above or beneath the consonant, after which they are pronounced, in a similar way as it is done in some systems of English shorthand.  A consonant followed by a short vowel is called a “moved letter” (Muharrakah); a consonant without such vowel is called “resting” or “quiescent” (Sakinah), and can stand only at the end of a syllable or word.

And now we are able to formulate the one simple rule, which determines the prosodical quantity in Arabic:  any moved letter, as ta, li, mu, is counted short; any moved letter followed by a quiescent one, as taf, fun, mus, i.e. any closed syllable beginning and terminating with a consonant and having a short vowel between, forms a long quantity.  This is certainly a relief in comparison with the numerous rules of classical Prosody, proved by not a few exceptions, which for instance in Dr. Smith’s elementary Latin Grammar fill eight closely printed pages.