that of ‘Ukaz...

that of ‘Ukaz, religious such as at Mecca, and cultural as that at Hirah, to evolve a common language and widely appreciated norms and forms of artistic composition, though, naturally enough, they exhibited peculiarities of usage of speech.

This common literary medium which developed out of the North Arabic, coinciding with the steady decline of the economic, political and cultural influence of the South, was leavened mainly in Hirah with the accompaniments of material and religious civilization as augmented with currents – Judaic, Christian, and Graeco-Roman – from the opposite end of the Northern Desert.

Generally speaking, it was precise to finesse so far as Bedouin life and environment were concerned, but lacked the facility for conveying abstract ideas and general concepts. However, it possessed, by the very nature of its being a compromise between various dialects, an immense wealth of synonyms together with ample resources of rhyme and assonance inherent in its schematic morphology.

Thus saj’ (rhyme) came to be the first and natural form of artistic composition prompted by the instinct for symmetry and balance in the structure of short, compact sentences especially designed for intonation and oral transmission without being committed to writing. The saj’ existed before metre; the evolution of metrical forms only pushed it to the end of a verse under the name of qafiyah .

It is sometimes overlooked that the qafiyah constituted an essential element – and not an additional, far less artificial, embellishment in the structure of Arabic poetry. In other words, verse without qafiyah has been unknown in Arabic during its infancy as much as in its youth and old age.

As we shall see later, so long as there was healthy development, any tendency on the part of the qafiyah to rigidity and monotony was checked in due time by adequate adaptation to the requirements of the theme ( vide the evolution of muzdawij and musammat ). In the period of decadence it was snot sheer conservatism but a deep realization of its essential worth, which caused artificiality to be preferred to freedom.