The Music of Words: Appreciating Meter (ʿAruz) in Classical Persian Verse

The beauty of classical Persian poetry lies not only in its imagery and philosophical depth but also in its musical pulse—the hidden rhythm that carries every couplet. That pulse springs from the art of ʿAruz (عروض), the quantitative prosody inherited from Arabic and adapted with elegant subtlety into Persian. In this post, we’ll explore how ʿAruz works, why it matters, and how it shapes the aesthetic experience of poets from Ferdowsi to Hafez and Rumi.

1. Origins of ʿAruz: From Arabic to Persian

• Al-Khalīl’s Legacy
  In the 8th century CE, the grammarian al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī codified the first systematic theory of Arabic meter, identifying patterns of long (–) and short (u) syllables and classifying them into sixteen “meters” (abjād).

• Persian Adoption
  As Persian poets embraced Arabic poetic forms, they adapted ʿAruz to Persian’s own phonology. They preserved al-Khalīl’s basic patterns while accommodating Persian’s tendency toward open (CV) and closed (CVC) syllables. Over time, these metres became the backbone of Persian verse, from epic masnavis to intimate ghazals.

2. Quantitative Meter: The Building Blocks

Unlike English iambs or trochees (which rely on stress), ʿAruz is quantitative—it counts the length of syllables:

• Short syllable (u): A vowel alone (e.g., be, di).

• Long syllable (–):

  • A vowel + consonant (CVC), e.g., dast

  • A long vowel (CVː), e.g., rā

• Overlong (– –): Sometimes a syllable plus two consonants, counted as long + short (– u).

Patterns of longs and shorts combine into feet (e.g., fa‘ūlun = – u – …