Rubai

The Rubai that is also known as Rubaiyat in western literature is an Urdu-Persian poetic form. Each Rubai stanza is supposed to be a quatrain, in which lines 1, 2 and 4 all rhyme. Therefore the rhyme sounds as AABA. The general pattern of Rubai is such that the poet uses metaphor and similes in first 3 lines but has to all of a sudden conclude the meaning in the fourth one. This form is very tough to write and thus preferred by experienced poets. The Rubai is a good form to use when you've got something to say; the constraints of the form are not severe enough to prevent you from saying it.

There is a variation of Rubaiyat known as interlocking Rubaiyat. In this type of Rubai, the third line of each stanza rhymes with lines 1, 2 and 4 of the next. Traditionally in Persia each Rubai was regarded as a poem in its own right. When a collection of them called Rubaiyat was published, they were arranged in a fixed order viz. in alphabetical order of the last letter of the rhyme.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the best example of Rubai form. It is actually a meditation on the meaning of life that concludes that we should eat, drink and be merry. Omar Khayyam lived in twelfth-century Persia, under Islamic law. The ideas in his Rubaiyat as well as his enthusiasm for wine were considered heretical. Therefore Rubaiyat were circulated anonymously, and probably memorized a lot more often than they were written down.

The Rubai form is much more lax than traditional forms of Arabic and Persian poetry, which would use a single rhyme all the way through the poem, however long.