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- Persian metres are patterns of long and short syllables in Persian poetry. Over the past 1000 years the Persian language has enjoyed a rich literature, especially of poetry. Until the advent of free verse in the 20th century, this poetry was always quantitative—that is the lines were composed in various patterns of long and short syllables. The different patterns are known as metres (US: meters). A knowledge of metre is essential for someone to correctly recite Persian poetry—and also often, since short vowels are not written in Persian script, to convey the correct meaning in cases of ambiguity. It is also helpful for those who memorise the verse. Metres in Persian have traditionally been analysed in terms of Arabic metres, from which they were supposed to have been adapted. However, in recent years it has been recognised that for the most part Persian metres developed independently from those in Arabic, and there has been a movement to analyse them on their own terms. An unusual feature of Persian poetry not found in Arabic, Latin, or Ancient Greek verse is that instead of two lengths of syllables (short and long), there are three lengths (short, long, and overlong). Overlong syllables can be used instead of a long syllable plus a short one. Persian metres were used not only in classical Persian poetry, but were also imitated in Turkish poetry of the Ottoman period, and in Urdu poetry under the Mughal emperors. That the poets of Turkey and India copied Persian metres, not Arabic ones, is clear from the fact that, just as with Persian verse, the most commonly used metres of Arabic poetry (the ṭawīl, kāmil, wāfir and basīṭ) are avoided, while those metres used most frequently in Persian lyric poetry are exactly those most frequent in Turkish and Urdu. (en)
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