Zajal

What zajal is

Zajal is a way of making poetry out loud. The words are in the spoken Arabic of the poet's own region, not in the formal Arabic of books, and they are arranged in stanzas with a repeated pattern of stresses rather than the long single rhyme of classical verse. Poets who improvise zajal are called zajjalin. Two of them, or more, trade lines before an audience, so the poem is also an argument. A chorus repeats important lines, and drums keep time. The name comes from an Arabic root that carries senses of making a sound, crying out, playing and singing.

Origins and history

The oldest zajal on record is by Ibn Quzman, who wrote in twelfth-century al-Andalus. His dates are given as 1078 to 1160. The view most researchers hold is that poets there took the popular verse of Romance-speaking neighbours and remade it in Arabic, at first informally and later in literary hands. Its stress patterns resemble those of Galician cantigas, Castilian villancicos, Italian dances and the French rondeau and virelai. When Moors left Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they carried the zajal and the muwashshahah to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. An early Egyptian master was Abu Abd Allah al-Ghubari, a fourteenth-century zajjal. In Lebanon the first name suggested is Bishop Gabriel ibn al-Qilai al-Hafadi, who died in 1516.

How an evening runs

A Lebanese zajal evening today follows a shape that took form in the 1930s, largely through the work of Assad Al-Khuri Al-Fghali, remembered as Shahrur Al-Wadi. It opens with recitation in the qasida, the ode. Then come the exchanges: debates in the m3anna and qerradi metres, with a popular variant sometimes called moukhammas mardoud. Love poetry follows in forms such as the muwashshah, which in this setting is playful and flirtatious. A chorus answers the poets throughout, keeping time on tambourines and other drums. Many evenings finish with a lament in the Shruqi form. The whole performance rests on improvisation, though the frames are well known to everyone taking part.

Words and music

Zajal sits inside a wider family of half-sung poetry from the Mediterranean, the Near East and Arabia. It shares features with nabati verse and with the songs of the troubadours: a duel of words, a small percussion section, and a group of voices repeating the poet's lines. In Lebanon that answering group is called the Reddadi. Instruments are modest, mostly tambourines and other drums, with a wind instrument such as the ney now and then. The language matters too: Lebanese Arabic carries traces of older Semitic speech such as Aramaic, Syriac and Canaanite, along with words borrowed later from Persian, Turkish, French and English.

Today and change

Zajal is not taught much. In the 1950s and 1960s, as pan-Arab ideas grew and Lebanese schooling expanded, colloquial writing was pushed further down the literary ladder. The canon has stayed largely unwritten, and only a few postgraduate theses have dealt with it. Many educated Lebanese would struggle to tell a m3anna from a qerradi, though they may know French verse forms from school. Recordings exist, many made for Lebanese television in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but national and university libraries have done little to transcribe or archive them. Attempts to raise the standing of colloquial Lebanese were tied for a time to ultra-nationalist politics.

How Zajal is kept

An evening of zajal puts two or more poets face to face. Each side answers the other in turn, making up lines on the spot, and the audience follows the exchanges closely. A chorus of men, and in recent decades women too, sings back key lines, with tambourines and other percussion setting the pulse; a wind player may join on a ney. The programme opens with a recited ode, moves into the debating forms known as m3anna and qerradi, and ends with love poetry, often closing on a lament.

When and where

Zajal has no fixed date in the year. It belongs to evening gatherings, in village squares, halls or on television. Its forms were shaped over centuries, and the modern Lebanese evening took its present shape in the 1930s. Recordings and broadcasts go back at least to the 1960s.

The tradition lives across the Levant, strongest in Lebanon and also found in Palestine, Syria and Jordan, where a skilled practitioner can become widely known. It is kept as well in the Maghreb, especially in Morocco and Algeria. Its older roots lie in al-Andalus, in what is now Spain, and writers in Egypt have used it in their work.

What Zajal means

For the people who keep it, zajal carries the speech of daily life rather than the formal register of written Arabic. That is part of why schools and universities long placed it below literature. Its imagery leans towards country life and the senses rather than the concerns of city intellectuals. Its standing has also been bound up with questions of identity, argued over sharply during the civil war years. Yet its poets have used it to speak of almost every human concern.

Questions people ask about Zajal

See also

MizmarA traditional double-reed instrument and drum ensemble for weddings and folk dancesHalayA traditional line and circle folk dance kept across Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, and Syria.Andalusi classical musicA classical suite of vocal and instrumental music shared across North AfricaDabkeA Levantine folk dance of linked lines and stomping steps, kept at weddings and community gatherings.

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Zajal on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.