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Get to know about Rubai that is also known as Rubaiyat in western literature. Rubai is an Indian Urdu poetry form.

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.






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