ABSTRACT
In Chapter Seven above “The muwashshaḥāt: Are they a mystery?”, I described the muwashshaḥāt as the product of the simple and natural attempt by the Arab literati to extend the proliferation or permutations of rhyme in Arabic prose to Arabic poetry. I pointed out also that in order to accommodate this proliferation of rhyme or to make it possible in poetry, Arabic verse forms had to undergo two notable and quite pervasive developments:
The frequent use of hemistichs and short versicles instead of the traditional Arabic verse, in order to multiply the internal rhymes, or to accomodate more of them.
The regular use of pausal forms out of pause, in order to circumvent the prescripts of desinential inflexion, (iʿrāb).
