Tawil

''Ṭawīl'' (, literally 'long'), or ''al-Ṭawīl'' (), is a meter used in classical Arabic poetry.

It comprises distichs (''bayt'') of two 'lines'—in Arabic usually written side by side, with a space dividing them, the first being called the ''sadr'' (صدر, literally "chest") and the other the ''ʿajuz'' (عجز, literally "belly"). Its basic form is as follows (the symbol ''–'' representing a long syllable, ''⏑'' representing a short syllable, and ''x'' representing a syllable that can be short or long):

: | ᴗ – x | ᴗ – – – | ᴗ – x | ᴗ – ᴗ – |   (2×)

This form can be exemplified through the traditional mnemonic '''' ().

The final syllable of every distich rhymes throughout the whole poem; a long poem might comprise a hundred distichs. In Classical verse, each distich is a complete syntactic unit. Provided by Wikipedia