Arabic and Central Asian poetics

thumb|An illustrated headpiece from a mid-18th century collection of ghazals and Rubaʿi|rubāʻīyāt

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.

Mathnawi ( ), also spelled masnavi, mesnevi or masnawi, is a kind of poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically "a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines". Most mathnawi poems follow a meter of eleven, or occasionally ten, syllables, but had no limit in their length. Typical mathnawi poems consist of an indefinite number of couplets, with the rhyme scheme aa/bb/cc.

prosody of Arabic poetry

poetry unit

A kharja or kharjah ( ; ; ; also known as a markaz 'center'), is the final couple of abyāt, or verses, of a muwaššaḥ ( 'girdle'), a poem or song of the strophic lyric genre from al-Andalus. The kharja can be in a language that is different from the body; a muwaššaḥ in literary Arabic might have a kharja in vernacular Andalusi Arabic or in a mix of Arabic and Andalusi Romance, while a muwaššaḥ in Hebrew might contain a kharja in Arabic, Romance, Hebrew, or a mix.

thumb|Depiction of Ghalib at a Mushaira Mushaira () is a traditional Urdu poetry gathering in which poets publicly recite their work, often engaging in forms of improvisation and competitive performance. Mushairas, also known as mehfil or mushairi, have been a defining institution of Urdu literary culture in North India, Pakistan, and the Deccan, particularly among Hyderabadi Muslims. It is often regarded as a forum for free self-expression.

Saj' () is a form of rhymed prose defined by its relationship to and use of end-rhyme, meter, and parallelism. There are two types of parallelism in saj': iʿtidāl (rhythmical parallelism, meaning "balance") and muwāzana (qualitative metrical parallelism).

thumb|Cover of the 1872 translation of the works of Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713–1781) A kulliyyāt (from Arabic: ; ; ; ; ) is a collection of the poetry of any one poet.

thumb|A manuscript of an urjūza (versification) of Muqaddimat Ibn Rushd ("The Introduction of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd," grandfather of Ibn Rushd the philosopher) Rajaz (, literally 'tremor, spasm, convulsion as may occur in the behind of a camel when it wants to rise') is a metre used in classical Arabic poetry. A poem composed in this metre is an urjūza. The metre accounts for about 3% of surviving ancient and classical Arabic verse. Some historians believe that rajaz evolved from saj'.

A tuyugh is a classical form of poetry in Central Asia found in classical Turkic poetry. Poets to use this style include Ali-Shir Nava'i and Gadāʾī, who both wrote in Chaghatay.

Waṣf () (literally 'attribute' or 'description'; pl. ) is an ancient style of Arabic poetry, which can be characterised as descriptive verse. The concept of was also borrowed into Persian, which developed its own rich poetic tradition in this mode.

poem by Ibn Arabi

Wāfir (, literally 'numerous, abundant, ample, exuberant') is a meter used in classical Arabic poetry. It is among the five most popular meters of classical Arabic poetry, accounting (alongside ṭawīl, basīṭ, kāmil, and mutaqārib) for 80-90% of lines and poems in the ancient and classical Arabic corpus.