Adjudicating a Student's Scansion in a Prosody Exercise
An AHSEC Persian poetry class is checking a student's scansion for a 5-mark prosody question. The line is from the class anthology: «توانا بود هر که دانا بود / ز دانش دل پیر برنا بود». The student writes on the board: «mafā'īlun mafā'īlun mafā'īlun» and concludes that the line is in hazaj. The teacher says the line is in motaqāreb, not hazaj. The class has 12 minutes and must resolve the dispute using only the first hemistich. A second student objects that «توانا» has three long syllables and therefore cannot be a fa'ūlun foot. The teacher asks for a syllable-by-syllable scan, a statement of the correct metre, and an explanation of the student's error. The textbook gives no foot diagrams, only the names of the metres, and the exam allows no meter dictionary.
1. Scan the first hemistich and identify the metre.
Read the worked answer
Read the hemistich as pronounced, not as written: «to-vā-nā bo-vad har ke dā-nā bo-vad». The scansion is: /to vā nā/ = U – – = fa'ūlun; /bo vad har/ = U – – = fa'ūlun; /ke dā nā/ = U – – = fa'ūlun; /bo vad/ = U – = fa'ūl (mahzuf). The metre is therefore motaqāreb, not hazaj. The first foot «توانا» is not three long syllables: the initial «to» is short (U), followed by two longs (vā, nā). That U – – shape is exactly fa'ūlun.
2. Why is the student's hazaj reading wrong, and what methodological error produced it?
Read the worked answer
The student has counted written letters rather than pronounced syllables and has forced the line into mafā'īlun (U – – –), a four-syllable foot that requires a fourth long element. The first foot has only three syllables, and the line's repeated U – – pattern is the signature of motaqāreb. The error is methodological: metre is based on the spoken sequence, with closed syllables and consonant clusters affecting length, not on the calligraphic shape of the word. A quick check is to tap the U – – pattern across the hemistich; hazaj would break at «توانا». The student should also note that «بود» in this line is pronounced with a short «bo» plus a closed «vad», not as a single long syllable.