Yemenite Jewish poetry

Yemenite Jewish poetry, often referred to as "liturgical poetry" because of its religious nature, has been an integral part of Yemenite Jewish culture since time immemorial. The Jews of Yemen have preserved a well-defined singing arrangement which not only includes the very poetic creation itself, but also involves a vocal and dance performance, accompanied in certain villages outside Sana'a by drumming on an empty tin-can (tankah) or a copper plate. The Jews of Yemen, maintaining strict adherence to Talmudic and Maimonidean halakha, observed the gezeirah which prohibited playing musical instruments, and "instead of developing the playing of musical instruments, they perfected singing and rhythm." (For the modern Yemenite-Israeli musical phenomenon see Yemenite Jewish music.) This arrangement was integrated into the walks of life familiar to the Jews of Yemen. The texts used in the arrangement were put down in writing and later included in separate song collections (dīwāns). The social strictures and norms in Yemenite Jewish culture provide for separate settings for men and for women, where the sexes are never mixed. Men’s song usually expressed the national aspirations of the Jewish people, and it was far removed from the singing associated with the Muslim environment, whereas folk songs of Jewish women were sung by rote memory (unwritten poetry) and expressed the happiness and sorrows inherent in their daily life and was, as a rule, closer to that of Muslim women.

In terms of the formal structure, men’s songs during social gatherings among Yemenite Jews are of three genres: nashīd (introduction), shirah (poem) and hallel (praise). The nashīd is written in the form of a classical Arabic qaṣīda. All songs of praise are always preceded by a song of supplication and of entreaties, known in Arabic as a nashīd. The shirah (poem) is a Hebrew term denoting two known structures taken from Arabic poetry, namely, the muwashshaḥ (lit. "girdle poem," being the most common poetic form in Yemen) and the Andalusian zajal. In the muwashshaḥ, the first strophe of the poem sets up a specific rhyme, and each strophe that follows is composed of four verses, whose last rhymes with the original strophe. These poetic genres were strictly composed in Hebrew, or else with a mixture of the two languages (Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic), although, occasionally, it could be found solely in Judeo-Arabic. The vast majority of these compositions are contained in an anthology known as the Dīwān.

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