ABSTRACT
Persian poetry (shicr or nazm) is distinguished from prose (nathr) by two indispensable formal components: end-rhyme (qfifiyah) and quantitative metre (carOd or wazri), i.e. the regular succession of long and short syllables. Both of these features - together with others - are shared by Persian and Arabic poetry. Both, moreover, are conspicuously absent from all demonstrably pre-Islamic poetic works in Iranian languages. The conclusion, thus, virtually imposes itself that the Persian Muslims borrowed the principles of rhyme and of quantitative metre from Arabic.
