Uno sguardo sui sedici metri poetici di Al-Khalil

This study aims to describe and analyse the metrical rules of versification referring to the system elaborated by al-Ḫalīl Bin Aḥmad, who was examined all the poetic compositions available to him going back to the Omayyade and Preislamic eras, designing a normative metrical system based on ten feet. This system remained practically intact until the beginning of the 20th century. For more than a thousand years, classical Arabic poetry was forced to follow the rules elaborated by the grammarian of Basra. Time after time critics confirmed the criteria distinguishing discourse in verse from discourse in prose or rhyming prose: in other words, his rules defining what is – and what is not – poetic discourse continued to be stressed. Like any act of linguistic expression, a line of poetry exists in time: real time when read aloud or silently, psychological or virtual time in the mind of the poet. Observing a traditional Arabic poem, one immediately notices that a line is divided into two segments of the same length that highlight the final rhyme, which is the same for the entire poem. The point of relevance is the symmetry among parts of the poem. If meaning is one of the pillars of poetry, then symmetry is achieved through the accurate interpretation, evaluation, or comparison symmetry among parts of the poem. Throughout this article, the author has analyzed the sixteen meter of classical Arabic poetry and their variations based on the system elaborated by al-Ḫalīl