An Investigation into the Rhythms Adopted by the Most Prominent Poets throughout the 10th,11th,and 12th Centuries (A. H.).

Rhythm is one of the main elements constructing poetry. It is still regarded as the poetical hallmark throughout Persian-speaking world despite so many years of attempts on the part of those producing blank and prose verse. Among all different varieties of classical Persian poetry formats, Ghazal has kept the strongest possible relation with meter and strict prosody, as it is proven to be the most deep-rooted, popular form during a millenium of Persian literature. It gains even more significance if we consider Ghazal as possessing, on the one side, fixed, stringent prosodic limitations, and, on the other, the fact that each and every poet has established his/her own idiosyncratic domain in this realm as proportionate to his/her own necessities arising form constructive, thematic, and tactical obligation of the type of Ghazal he/she produces. This study has concentrated on figuring out main meters from 14000 Ghazals by an eminent group of Ghazal-composers throughout 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries (A. H.) by an analysis of the position of various prosodic tools inside their works. These poets have been picked for the sake of their divertsity in the range of rhythms they had chosen for their works. Effort has also been made to bring out some significant relationships between the rhythms, on the hand, and the concepts and different stylistics adopted to be flourished by the mentioned poets, on the other.