Zajal

Zajal (Arabic: زجل) is a traditional form of oral strophic poetry declaimed in a colloquial dialect. While there is little evidence of the exact origins of the zajal, the earliest recorded zajal poet was the Andalusian poet Ibn Quzman (who lived from 1078 to 1160). It is generally conceded that the early ancestors of Levantine dialectical poetry were the Andalusian zajal and muwashshaḥah, brought to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean by Arabs fleeing Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An early master of Egyptian zajal was the fourteenth century zajjāl Abu ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghubārī. Zajal's origins may be ancient but it can be traced back to at least the 12th century. It is most alive in Lebanon today, and the Maghreb and particularly Algeria, and in the Levant, especially in Lebanon, Palestine and in Jordan where professional zajal practitioners can attain high levels of recognition and popularity. Zajal is semi-improvised and semi-sung and is often performed in the format of a debate between zajjalin (poets who improvise the zajal). It is usually accompanied by percussive musical instruments (with the occasional wind instrument, e.g. the ney) and a chorus of men (and more recently, women) who sing parts of the verse.

Egyptian poets known for their literary use of the popular zajal form are Yaqub Sanu, 'Abd Allah al-Nadim, Bayram al-Tunisi, and Ahmed Fouad Negm. Well-known Lebanese zajjaali include Zein Sh'eib, Talih Hamdan, Zaghloul alDamour, Moussa Zgheib, Asaad Said, and Khalil Rukoz.

Lebanese zajal is a semi-improvised, semi-sung or declaimed form of poetry in the colloquial Lebanese Arabic dialect. Its roots may be as ancient as Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, but various similar manifestations of zajal can be traced to 10th-12th-century Moorish Spain (Al-Andalus), and specifically to the colloquial poet Ibn Quzman (Cordoba, 1078-1160). Zajal has close ties in prosody, delivery, form and spirit with various semi-sung colloquial poetry traditions, including such seemingly disparate traditions as those of Nabati Poetry of Arabia and the troubadours of Provence. Many Near-Eastern, Arabian and Mediterranean cultures (including Greece, Algeria, Morocco, Spain and southern France) had, or still have, rich semi-improvised, semi-sung colloquial poetry traditions, which share some traits with Lebanese zajal, such as the verbal duel (e.g. the jeu parti of the troubadours), the use of tambourines or other minimalist percussion instruments, and a chanting chorus of men (Reddadi, in Lebanese) who repeat key verses or refrains recited by the poets.

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