Tawil

For other uses, see Tawil (disambiguation).

Ṭawīl (Arabic: طويل, literally 'long'), or al-Ṭawīl (الطويل), is a meter used in classical Arabic poetry.

It comprises distichs (bayt) of two 'lines'—in Arabic usually written side by side, with a space dividing them, the first being called the sadr (صدر, literally "chest") and the other the ʿajuz (عجز, literally "belly"). Its basic form is as follows (the symbol – representing a long syllable, ⏑ representing a short syllable, and x representing a syllable that can be short or long):[1]

| ᴗ – x | ᴗ – – – | ᴗ – x | ᴗ – ᴗ – |   (2×)

This form can be exemplified through the traditional mnemonic Faʿūlun Mafāʿīlun Faʿūlun Mafāʿilun (فَعولُن مَفاعيلُن فَعولُن مَفاعِلُن).

The final syllable of every distich rhymes throughout the whole poem; a long poem might comprise a hundred distichs. In Classical verse, each distich is a complete syntactic unit.[2]

  1. ^ Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology, trans. by Geert Jan van Gelder (New York: New York University Press, 2013), p. xxiii.
  2. ^ Charles Greville Tuetey (trans.), Classical Arabic Poetry: 162 Poems from Imrulkais to Maʿarri (London: KPI, 1985), pp. 8-9.