SUFI POETRY IN SOMALI

59.

in so-called 'alphabetical poems' exemplified by Texts

5 and 22, where the letters of the Arabic alphabet are
personified and introduce each line. This alphabetical
presentation is probably inspired by some Arabic non-
classical model but I have not been able to trace its sources.
In the field of scansion the Sufi poetry in Somali follows
exactly the same pattern as its secular counterpart and

shows no evidence whatsoever of any influence of Classical

Arabic.
Till recently little was known of the patterns of

Somali scansion in spite of various attempts by foreign

scholars to establish their nature. In 1976, however, a

young Somali poet, Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac, a scientist by

training, published a summary of his researches into this

field, which extended over several years, in a series of

articles in Xiddigta Oktoobar.l It would be beyond the

scope of this thesis to give a detailed account of his

methods and formulations, and I shall give only some

indication of their natur:e.

He demonstrates that each genre of Somali verse has

a characteristic sequence of syllables, short or long, and

he uses a system of notation ln which the former are

represented by the figure 1 and the latter by the figure 2,

and the length of the syllable is determined by the length

of the vowel or diphthong it contaiis. He states that in

every line there is somewhere near its middle a syllable

which plays a pivotal role. He names it xundhur 'navel' ,

'centre' and he represents it either by putting it in

parentheses or by drawing squares on both sides of it.

Long line poems may have two or more xundhur in each line