A Criticism of Studying and Categorizing Classical Poetry Meters in the Metric Phonology Framework

This paper aims at studying the meters which are common between Arabic and Persian poems. To this end, we examine and discuss the theory of Golston and Riad (1998) about classical meters. These classical meters in turn are driven from the theory of metrics by Khalil Ibn Ahmad, the famous grammarian and the founder of Aruz (prosody). Golston and Riad's theory is one of the well-known theories in scientific interpretation and classification of Alkhalil meters, and is written in the framework of prosodic metrics. Though this theory is essentially for Arabic meters, it's vividly applicable to Persian meters, too. Metric units of this theory are: syllable, foot, metron, and hemistich the dominant property of which is "binarity". Here we first examine the different dimensions of the theory and then study the theoretical implications of it in the realm of Persian meters. Findings of this research show that the distinct appreciation of the Arab and the Persian about their respective verses has its roots in phonology.