zajal

…in Spain is the songlike zajal (melody), interesting for its embodiment of dialect phrases and the use of occasional words from Romance languages. Its master was Ibn Quzmān of Córdoba (died 1160), whose lifestyle was similar to that of Western troubadours. His approach to life as expressed in these melodious…

…as the muwashshaḥ and the zajal, that were freer in rhyme and metre than the classical qaṣīdah or formal ode. These innovations in prosody opened the way to further musical developments. Especially important was the nawbah (“suite”), a form that included songs and instrumental music, free or metrical, that were…

…dabkah (the national dance), and zajal (folk poetry), and the refinement of traditional crafts.

…in the Iberian Peninsula: the zajal and the muwashshaḥ. There is a great deal of controversy regarding almost every aspect of these two forms—their early history, their performance practices, their metrics, and their linkage to the early history of Western lyric poetry. What is clear, however, is not only that…

The genres of zajal and muwashshaḥ that originated in Muslim Spain had love as their primary theme. Often blending both ʿUmarī and ʿUdhrī themes with songs and popular poems in Romance dialects, they present a blend of images and motifs that is representative of the cultural environment in…