In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of scanning poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep in mind that no Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel. Where our mode of rendering Arabic in the Roman character would make this appear to be the case, either Hamzah (silent h), or ’Ayn (represented by the sign ’) is the real initial, and the only element to be taken in account as a letter. It follows as a self-evident corollary that wherever a single consonant stands between two vowels, it never closes the previous syllable, but always opens the next one. Our word “Akámú,” for instance, can only be divided into the syllables: A (properly Ha)-ká-mú, never into Ak-á-mú or Ak-ám-ú.
It has been stated above that the syllable ká is closed by the letter Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable mú is closed by the letter Wáw, and I may add now, as the word fí is closed by the letter Yá (y). To make this perfectly clear, I must repeat that the Arabic Alphabet, as it was originally written, deals only with consonants. The signs for the short vowel-sounds were added later for a special purpose, and are generally not represented even in printed books, e.g. in the various editions of The Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or poetical passages are provided with the vowel-points. But among those consonants there are three, called weak letters (Hurúf al-’illah), which have a particular organic affinity to these vowel-sounds: the guttural Hamzah, which is akin to a, the palatal Yá, which is related to i, and the labial Wáw, which is homogeneous with u. Where any of the weak letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the end of a word or being itself followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens the preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of prolongation (Harf al-Madd). Thus, bearing in mind that the Hamzah is in reality a silent h, the syllable ká might be written kah, similarly to the German word “sah,” where the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a lengthened sound to the a. In like manner mú and fí are written in Arabic muw and fiy respectively, and form long quantities not because they contain a vowel long by nature, but because their initial “Muharrakah” is followed by a “Sákinah,” exactly as in the previously mentioned syllables taf, lun, mus.[[449]] In the Roman transliteration, Akámú forms a word of five letters, two of which are consonants, and three vowels; in Arabic it represents the combination H(a)k(a)hm(u)w, consisting also of five letters but all consonants, the intervening vowels being expressed in writing either merely by superadded external signs, or more frequently not at all. Metrically it represents one short and two long quantities (⏑ ‑ ‑), forming in Latin a trisyllabic foot, called Bacchíus, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral “Rukn” (pillar) or “Juz” (part, portion), the technical designation for which we shall introduce presently.
There is one important remark more to be made with regard to the Hamzah: at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive, Hamzat al-Wasl, or disjunctive, Hamzat al Kat’. The difference is best illustrated by reference to the French so-called aspirated h, as compared with the above mentioned silent h. If the latter, as initial of a noun, is preceded by the article, the article loses its vowel, and, ignoring the silent h altogether, is read with the following noun almost as one word: le homme becomes l’homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes l’ami. This resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl. If, on the other hand, a French word begins with an aspirated h, as for instance héros, the article does not drop its vowel before the noun, nor is the h sounded as in the English word “hero,” but the effect of the aspirate is simply to keep the two vowel sounds apart, so as to pronounce le éros with a slight hiatus between, and this is exactly what happens in the case of the Arabic Hamzah Kat’.
With regard to the Wasl, however, Arabic goes a step further than French. In the French example, quoted above, we have seen it is the silent h and the preceding vowel, which are eliminated; in Arabic both the Hamzah and its own Harakah, i.e. the short vowel following it, are supplanted by their antecedent. Another example will make this clear. The most common instance of the Hamzah Wasl is the article al (for h(a)l = the Hebrew hal), where it is moved by Fathah. But it has this sound only at the beginning of a sentence or speech, as in “Al-hamdu” at the head of the Fatihah, or in “Alláhu” at the beginning of the third Surah. If the two words stand in grammatical connection, as in the sentence “Praise be to God,” we cannot say “Al-Hamdu li-Alláhi,” but the junction (Wasl) between the dative particle li and the noun which it governs must take place. According to the French principle, this junction would be effected at the cost of the preceding element and li Alláhi would become l’Alláhí; in Arabic, on the contrary, the kasrated l of the particle takes the place of the following fathated Hamzah and we read li ’lláhi instead. Proceeding in the Fatihah we meet with the verse “Iyyáka na’budu wa iyyáka nasta’ínu,” Thee do we worship and of Thee do we ask aid. Here the Hamzah of iyyáka (properly hiyyáka with silent h) is disjunctive, and therefore its pronunciation remains the same at the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, or to put it differently, instead of coalescing with the preceding wa into wa’yyáka, the two words are kept separate, by the Hamzah reading wa iyyáka, just as it was the case with the French Le héros.
If the conjunctive Hamzah is preceded by a quiescent letter, this takes generally Kasrah: “Tálat al-Laylah,” the night was longsome, would become Tálati ’l-Laylah. If, however, the quiescent letter is one of prolongation, it mostly drops out altogether, and the Harakah of the next preceding letter becomes the connecting vowel between the two words, which in our parlance would mean, that the end-vowel of the first word is shortened before the elided initial of the second. Thus “fí al-bayti,” in the house, which in Arabic is written f(i)y h(a)lb(a)yt(i) and which we transliterate fí ’l-bayti, is in poetry read fil-bayti, where we must remember, that the syllable fil, in spite of its short vowel, represents a long quantity, because it consists of a moved letter followed by a quiescent one. Fíl would be overlong and could, according to Arabic prosody, stand only in certain cases at the end of a verse, i.e. in pause, where a natural tendency prevails to prolong a sound.
The attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodical value of the line quoted above with unerring security. For metrical purposes it syllabifies into: A-ká-mul-vaj-da fí kal-bí wa sá-rú, containing three short and eight long quantities. The initial unaccented a is short, for the same reason why the syllables da and wa are so, that is, because it corresponds to an Arabic letter, the Hamzah or silent h, moved by Fathah. The syllables ká, fí, bí, sá, rú, are long for the same reason, why the syllables mul, waj, kal are so, that is, because the accent in the transliteration corresponds to a quiescent Arabic letter, following a moved one. The same simple criterion applies to the whole list, in which I give in alphabetical order the first lines and the metre of all the poetical pieces contained in the Mac. edition, and which will be found at the end of this volume.
The prosodical unities, then, in Arabic are the moved and the quiescent letter, and we are now going to show how they combine into metrical elements, feet, and metres.
i. The metrical elements (Usúl) are:
1. The Sabab,[[450]] which consists of two letters and is either khafíf (light) or sakíl (heavy). A moved letter followed by a quiescent, i.e. a closed syllable, like the aforementioned taf, lun, mus, to which we may now add fá = fah, ’í = ’iy, ’ú = ’uw, form a Sabab khafíf, corresponding to the classical long quantity (‑). Two moved letters in succession, like muta, ’ala, constitute a Sabab sakíl, for which the classical name would be Pyrrhic (⏑ ⏑). As in Latin and Greek, they are equal in weight and can frequently interchange, that is to say, the Sabab khafíf can be evolved into a sakíl by moving its second Harf, or the latter contracted into the former, by making its second letter quiescent.
2. The Watad, consisting of three letters, one of which is quiescent. If the quiescent follows the two moved ones, the Watad is called majmú’ (collected or joined), as fa’ú (= fa’uw), mafá (= mafah), ’ilun, and it corresponds to the classical Iambus (⏑ ‑). If, on the contrary, the quiescent intervenes or separates between the two moved letters, as in fá’i (= fah’i), látu (= lahtu), taf’i, the Watad is called mafrúk (separated), and has its classical equivalent in the Trochee (‑ ⏑).