Note 489 — TALE OF NÚR AL-DÍN ALÍ & HIS SON BADR AL-DÍN HASAN (continued 2)

The seventh of the sixteen "Bahr" (metres) in Arabic prosody; the easiest because allowing the most licence and, consequently, a favourite for didactic, homiletic and gnomic themes. It means literally "agitated" and was originally applied to the rude song of the Cameleer. De Sacy calls this doggrel "the poet's ass" (Torrens, Notes xxvi.). It was the only metre in which Mohammed the Apostle ever spoke: he was no poet (Koran xxxvi., 69) but he occasionally recited a verse and recited it wrongly (Dabistan iii., 212). In Persian prosody Rajaz is the seventh of nineteen and has six distinct varieties (pp. 79-81, "Gladwin's Dissertations on Rhetoric," etc. Calcutta, 1801). I shall have more to say about it in the terminal Essay.