The Metrical System of Fahlawiyyāt:A Historical Survey

Fahlawiyyāt (sing. fahlawī) are eleven-syllable quatrains in the oral poetry of Western Iranian Languages. Linguistically, they are divided into two groups of old (i.e. composed in a dead language) and new (i.e. composed in a living language), and, prosodically, into two groups of quantitative and non-quantitative metres. Accordingly, fahlawiyyāt may be classified in a fourfold schema: 1) old non-quantitative, 2) old quantitative, 3) new quantitative, and 4) new non-quantitative or regional. It is possible to reconstruct the original characteristics of the old non-quantitative fahlawiyyāt on the basis of metrical features of new non-quantitative examples, which may lead us to conclude that the old non-quantitative fahlawiyyāt must have had a three-beat (or three-ictus) accentual metre with eleven syllables.