Qasida

The qaṣīda (also spelled qaṣīdah; plural qaṣā’id) is an ancient Arabic word and form of poetry, often translated as ode. The qasida originated in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and passed into non-Arabic cultures after the Arab Muslim expansion.

The word qasida is originally an Arabic word (قصيدة, plural qaṣā’id, قصائد), and is still used throughout the Arabic-speaking world; it was borrowed into some other languages such as Persian: قصیده (alongside چكامه, chakameh), and Turkish: kaside.

The classic form of qasida maintains both monometer, a single elaborate meter throughout the poem, and monorhyme, where every line rhymes on the same sound It typically runs from fifteen to eighty lines, and sometimes more than a hundred.

Well-known examples of this genre include the poems of the Mu'allaqat (a collection of pre-Islamic poems, the most being the one of Imru' al-Qays), the Qasida Burda (Poem of the Mantle) by Imam al-Busiri, and Ibn Arabi's classic collection Tarjumān al-Ashwāq (The Interpreter of Desires).

Form

The most common form of the qasida is tripartite (or is constituted by three parts). The typical three-part structure runs as follows:

A desert motif (the nasīb)

A description of a camel or a horse (the raḥīl)

A tribal boast or similar (the fakhr)

Origins

The tripartite qasida originated among Najdis (then a region extending east of the Hejazi mountains all the way up to modern-day Iraq) in the early sixth century. After repression of the development of kingships in the Arabian Peninsula on the part of the Byzantine and Sassanian empires, individuals in the peninsula began to invoke earlier notions of Arabian kingship in their poetry. The qasida may have emerged in this context, in the process of their negotiations of status with Arabophone kings that were invoking earlier notions of Arabian kingship. Supporting this is the fact that a number of the earliest reported qasidas were directed to the Ghassanids and Lakhmids.