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 following form (where "–" represents a long syllable, "u" a short syllable, and "uu" one long or two shorts):[2]

| u – uu – | u – uu – | u – – |

Thus, unlike most classical Arabic metres, wāfir allows the poet to substitute one long syllable for two shorts, an example of the prosodic element known as a biceps. Thus allows wāfir lines to have different numbers of syllables from each other, a characteristic otherwise only found in kāmil, mutadārik and some forms of basīṭ.[3]

Wāfir is traditionally represented with the mnemonic (tafāʿīl) 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

| u – – – | u – uu – | u – – || u – – – | u – uu – | u – – |

| u – – – | u – uu – | u – – || u – – – | u – – – | u – – |

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-?):[9]

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.

| u – – – | u – uu – | u – – || u – uu – | u – uu – | u – – |

| u – – – | u – uu – | u – – || u – – – | u – uu – | u – – |

| u – uu – | u – uu – | u – – || u – uu – | u – uu – | u – – |

| u – uu – | u – uu – | u – – || u – – – | u – – – | u – – |

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 startled

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, https://www.jstor.org/stable/594988.
11. Nadia Yaqub, 'Towards a Synchronic Metrical Analysis of Oral Palestinian Poetry', Al-'Arabiyya, 36 (2003), 1-26, https://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.