Arabic poetry meters: the 16 classical buhur, their feet and their variations

Classical Arabic poetry is written in metres called buhur (بحور, literally seas). Each metre is a fixed pattern of feet (tafail), and a verse (bayt) is two half-verses: the sadr (صدر, chest) and the ajuz (عجز, belly), each following the pattern. Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi, who died in 786, set out fifteen metres in five circles. His student al-Akhfash added a sixteenth, al-Mutadarik (the Consecutive). The system has held for over twelve centuries, and it still describes the poems students read today.

The free Cubbbix Arabic Poetry Meters tool lists all sixteen metres with their feet, their meanings and their circle, and it includes a verse formatter: paste the two halves of your verse, pick the metre, and copy the formatted bayt, sadr on the right and ajuz on the left, the way Arabic poems are printed. The tool teaches metres and formats verses. It does not scan a verse automatically, because correct scansion needs the pronounced form of the words, with elisions and vowel lengths that plain text does not carry, and the page says so plainly.

Figure 1: Sixteen metres, eight feet, and a verse in two halves.

Feet, pegs and cords

A foot is a fixed sequence of short and long syllables. Short syllables are open syllables with a short vowel. Long syllables are closed syllables or open syllables with a long vowel. Al-Khalil described feet as pegs (awtad) and cords (asbab): a peg is a short syllable followed by a long one, and a cord is one or two short syllables. Sixteen metres are built from eight feet: fa'oolun, mafaa'eelun, faa'ilaatun, mustaf'ilun, mufaa'alatun, mutafaa'ilun, faa'ilun and maf'oolat. Every classical metre is a repetition of one or two of these feet, in a fixed order within each half-verse.

The five circles group metres that share feet. Tawil, Madid and Basit form one circle. Wafir and Kamil form another. Hazaj, Rajaz and Ramal form a third. Sari, Munsarih, Khafif, Mudari, Muqtadab and Mujtathth form a fourth. Mutaqarib and Mutadarik form a fifth. Knowing the circle helps a reader: a poem that starts in one metre of a circle will not drift into a metre of another circle, because the feet do not match. The commonest metres are Tawil, Basit and Kamil, the three great metres, and the example verse on the tool is the most famous Tawil line in Arabic poetry: the opening of Imru al-Qays's Muallaqa, qifa nabki min dhikra habibin wa manzili.

Figure 2: Eight feet build all sixteen metres. The circles group metres that share feet.

Why real poems break the pattern

A learner who expects an exact match will think every real poem is broken. Real poems use licensed variations called zihafat: shortening a long syllable, dropping a syllable, or changing a vowel in certain feet. The last foot of a half-verse changes most often: in Tawil, the last foot is usually mafaa'ilun, shortened from mafaa'eelun. The variations are part of the system, not mistakes, and a scansion that ignores them will fail on the first real poem it meets. That is the second reason the tool does not auto-scan: a scan that flags every zihaf as an error teaches the wrong lesson.

The formatter, by contrast, does a job a machine can do well: it lays a verse out correctly, with the halves in the right order, at a readable size, ready to copy into a document or a lesson. Pick the metre, paste the halves, copy the result. The metre check stays with a teacher or a scansion tool that works from pronounced syllables, and the page does not pretend otherwise.

Figure 3: Zihafat shorten or alter feet, especially the last foot of a half-verse. They are part of the system.

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