Literary Arts (May 2013)
A Study of Muslim Philosophers’ Views about Rhythm and Rhyme (with emphasis on the works of Aristotle, al-Farabi, Averroes, Ibn Sina, Baghdadi, Khajeh Nasir and Ghartajeni)
Abstract
Abstract A part of Muslim philosophers’ studies is allocated to music. They categorize music as a sub-branch of mathematical sciences and investigate it scientifically, not artistically. Al-Musighi al-Kabir by al-Farabi and Javame’ Elm al-Musighi by Ibn Sina are among the most important works in this regard. Under the general category of music, they also allocate a section to the music of poem and investigate it scientifically. Their ideas about the music of poem are similar to as well as different from the ideas of prosodists. This article aims to study their ideas about the music of poem briefly. The first section is allocated to the issue of rhythm in verbal arts and it is shown that our philosophers consider two kinds of rhythm: quantifiable and not quantifiable. The first one exists in poem and the second one is in non-poetic language. Also they define certain characteristics for each of these rhythms. Quantity, the equality of cadences, provoking admiration and having distant returns are the features of poetic rhythm, whereas regular join and separation, similar endings, symmetry of sentences with regard to length, agreement and similarity of symmetrical words regarding movements, pauses and numbers of such words, appropriate usage of music-creating devices such as puns, alliterations and parallelisms are among the features of non-poetic rhythms. The significance of rhythm in poem and its status is another issue investigated in this article and it is shown that music and mimesis are two necessary elements that poem is made simply by the presence of them and the fundamental matter in the music of poem is “proportion”. Also it is shown that such matter is the basis of meters and prosodies. Our investigation shows that musical sounds and poetic meters are following the same system. Under other issues such as “Tanghim” it is shown that, by creating such terms, philosophers try to show that the factor of sound is important in the formation of rhythm and the proposition of issues such as the relationship between rhythm and emotional-semantic backgrounds of poem makes it clear if in their views there is a meaningful relationship between these two factors or not? Rhyme is the second music-creating element in the poem. Philosophers have investigated this element less than rhythm. For example, Ibn Sina and al-Farabi explain the relation between rhyme and Arabic as well as other poems. The disagreements between philosophers and prosodists with regard to this element are also studied in this article.
