Note 151 — Chapter III

Qaṣída is explained by Arabian lexicographers to mean a poem with an artistic purpose, but they differ as to the precise sense in which 'purpose' is to be understood. Modern critics are equally at variance. Jacob (Stud. in Arab. Dichtern, Heft III, p. 203) would derive the word from the principal motive of these poems, namely, to gain a rich reward in return for praise and flattery. Ahlwardt (Bemerkungen über die Aechtheit der alten Arab. Gedichte, p. 24 seq.) connects it with qaṣada, to break, "because it consists of verses, every one of which is divided into two halves, with a common end-rhyme: thus the whole poem is broken, as it were, into two halves;" while in the Rajaz verses, as we have seen (p. 74 supra), there is no such break.