A Beit (also spelled bait, ar, بيت , literally "a house") is a metrical unit of
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
,
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
,
Urdu
Urdu (;"Urdu" '' Sindhi poetry. It corresponds to a line, though sometimes improperly renderered as " couplet" since each ''beit'' is divided into two
hemistich
A hemistich (; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin verse, Latin and Greek poetry, the hemist ...
s of equal length, each containing two, three or four feet, or from 16 to 32 syllables."Arabian Poetry for English Readers," by William Alexander Clouston (1881) p. 379 in
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
William Alexander Clouston
William Alexander Clouston (1843 – 23 October 1896) was a Scottish 19th century folklorist from Orkney.prosody originated with the
Bedouins
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...
or Arabs of the desert, as, in the nomenclature of the different parts of the line, one foot is called "a tent-pole", another "tent-peg" and the two
hemistich
A hemistich (; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin verse, Latin and Greek poetry, the hemist ...
s of the verse are called after the folds or leaves of the double-door of the tent or "house".
Through Ottoman Turkish, it got into Albanian and the bards of Muslim tradition in the
Albanian literature
Albanian literature stretches back to the Middle Ages and comprises those literary texts and works written in Albanian. It may also refer to literature written by Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian diaspora particularly in Italy. Alb ...
took their name after this metrical unit, the poets known as bejtexhi, meaning literally meaning "couplet makers".