Poetry & language · الشعر واللغة
The pen and the letter, eloquence, the ode and its rhyme, music and night-long conversation.
القلمُ والحرف، والبلاغة، والقصيدةُ وقافيتُها، والطربُ وسمرُ الليل.
- طَرَب (ṭarab) — musical rapture; ecstasy brought on by music
- صَدًى (ṣadā) — echo
- صَمْت (ṣamt) — silence
- هَمْس (hams) — whisper
- أَطْلَال (aṭlāl) — the traces of an abandoned encampment — the ruins where classical poems begin
- عَنْدَلِيب (ʿandalīb) — nightingale
- قَلَم (qalam) — pen, reed pen
- مِدَاد (midād) — ink
- حَرْف (ḥarf) — letter of the alphabet
- كَلِمَة (kalimah) — word
- لُغَة (lughah) — language
- ضَاد (ḍād) — the letter ḍ (ض)
- بَلَاغَة (balāghah) — eloquence; the art of rhetoric
- فَصَاحَة (faṣāḥah) — clarity and purity of speech
- بَيَان (bayān) — eloquent expression; clarity
- خَطّ (khaṭṭ) — calligraphy, handwriting
- قَصِيدَة (qaṣīdah) — poem; ode
- قَافِيَة (qāfiyah) — rhyme
- دِيوَان (dīwān) — collected poems of a poet
- حِكَايَة (ḥikāyah) — tale, story
- سَمَر (samar) — night conversation; talking late under the moon
- نَدِيم (nadīm) — boon companion; a friend for long evenings
- عُود (ʿūd) — the oud (lute)
- هَوْدَج (hawdaj) — howdah, a covered litter carried on a camel
- نَجْد (najd) — highland, upland
- مَهَاة (mahāh) — oryx, the wild desert antelope
- حُدَاء (ḥudāʾ) — the camel driver’s song, sung to keep the camels walking
- رَبْع (rabʿ) — an abode, a spring campsite
- شِعْر (shiʿr) — poetry
- بَيْت (bayt) — house, home
- وَزْن (wazn) — weight
- نَثْر (nathr) — prose
- خَطِيب (khaṭīb) — orator, preacher
- رِوَايَة (riwāyah) — novel
- أَدَب (adab) — literature
- مَقَامَة (maqāmah) — the maqāma, a tale told in rhymed prose
- مُعَلَّقَة (muʿallaqah) — one of the celebrated pre-Islamic odes known as the Muʿallaqāt
- رَاوِي (rāwī) — reciter of poetry, transmitter
- مَطْلَع (maṭlaʿ) — the opening line of a poem
- نَسِيب (nasīb) — the tender opening of an ode, remembering a beloved
- رِثَاء (rithāʾ) — elegy, lament for the dead
- مَثَل (mathal) — proverb
- كِتَاب (kitāb) — book
- صَفْحَة (ṣafḥah) — page
- رِزْمَة (rizmah) — bundle, bale
- نَاي (nāy) — the ney, an end-blown reed flute
- قَانُون (qānūn) — law; a fixed rule or canon
- إِيقَاع (īqāʿ) — rhythm; the measured beat of music or verse
- لَحْن (laḥn) — melody, tune
- غِنَاء (ghināʾ) — singing; the art of song
- مَوَّال (mawwāl) — the mawwāl, a sung poem, often in colloquial Arabic, with a freely improvised melody