Note 146 — Chapter III
Reading edition
The Arabic verse (bayt) consists of two halves or hemistichs (miṣrá‘). It is generally convenient to use the word 'line' as a translation of miṣrá‘, but the reader must understand that the 'line' is not, as in English poetry, an independent unit. Rajaz is the sole exception to this rule, there being here no division into hemistichs, but each line (verse) forming an unbroken whole and rhyming with that which precedes it.