Tawil


Ṭawīl, or al-Ṭawīl, is a meter used in classical Arabic poetry.
It comprises distichs of two 'lines'—in Arabic usually written side by side, with a space dividing them, the first being called the sadr and the other the ʿajuz. Its basic form is as follows :
This form can be exemplified through the traditional mnemonic Faʿūlun Mafāʿīlun Faʿūlun Mafāʿilun.
The final syllable of every distich rhymes throughout the whole poem; a long poem might comprise a hundred distichs. In Classical verse, each distich is a complete syntactic unit.
Ṭawīl was one of the most popular metres in early classical Arabic poetry, comprising over half the surviving corpus of pre-Islamic poetry. One early exponent was Imru' al-Qais, whose Mu‘allaqa is in the metre. Its famous opening distich runs:

قفا نبك من ذِكرى حبيب ومنزل / بسِقطِ اللِّوى بينَ الدَّخول فحَوْملِ
qifā nabki min dhikrā ḥabībin wa-manzilī / bi-siqṭi l-liwā bayna d-dakhūli fa-ḥawmalī
Stay—Let us weep at the remembrance of our beloved, at the sight of the station where her tent was raised, by the edge of yon bending sands between Dahul and Haumel.

Ṭawīl is often used alongside another meter called basīṭ.