A Comparison between the Meters of Turkish Poetry and Arabic Prosody:A Descriptive-Analytical Study

Some Turkish researchers believe that the roots of the Arabic prosody meters go back to ancient Turkish folk poetry. They believe that the meters of the Turkish prosody are not based on the Arabic prosody. The meters of the Arabic prosody have become the only meters for Persian poetry after the poets of Persian literature became acquainted with Arabic prosody. Therefore, no trace of the old syllabic of the Pahlavi and Middle Persian languages remained. However, Turkish poets used the prosodic meters alongside the local syllabic meters. This descriptive-analytical study intends to address the similarities and differences that exist between the meters of Turkish poetry and Arabic prosody and tries to answer the question about the extent of the Turks’ commitment to their prosodic meters and the extent of theinfluence of the Arabic prosody in their poetry. The results show that whileArabic prosody meters are based on the number of syllables and the proportionality of the spellings and the equal parts (length and shortness), Turkish poetryis based on an equal number of spellings in each part of poetry. There is a lot of difference in the use of some Arabic poetic measures influenced by the Arabic prosody. Among the similarities between the two kinds of literature is that the monorhyme in the poetry of both languages is considered a kind of figurative speech, and we noticed that the meter used is very close to the Turkish syllabic meters.