The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 · Richard Francis Burton translation

Note 489
TALE OF NUR AL-DIN AND HIS SON. (continued 2)

Anonymous

The seventh of the sixteen "Bahr" (metres) in Arabic prosody; the easiest because allowing the most license 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.

ITS PLACE IN THE BOOK

…of all attributes. But the acme of beauty is in the hair and, indeed, al-Shihab the Hijazi hath brought together all these items in his doggrel verse of the metre Rajaz, [FN#489] and it is this:

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Note 489TALE OF NUR AL-DIN AND HIS SON. (continued 2)

Note 489
TALE OF NUR AL-DIN AND HIS SON. (continued 2)