{{Short description|Line or couplet in Asian poetry}} A '''bayt'''{{efn|Also anglicized as ''bait'', ''beit'', ''beyt''.}} ({{langx|ar|بَيْت|translit=bayt}}, {{IPA|ar|bajt|pron}}, {{lit|a house}}) is a metrical unit of Arabic, Azerbaijani, Ottoman, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi and Urdu poetry.
In Arabic poetry, a bayt corresponds to a single line divided into two hemistichs of equal length, each containing two, three or four feet, or from 16 to 32 syllables.<ref name="bare_url">"Arabian Poetry for English Readers" by William Alexander Clouston (1881), [https://books.google.com/books?id=_wxVmMoSpq4C&dq=%22beit+is%22+poetry&pg=PA379 p. 379] in Google Books</ref> In Persian, Turkic and Urdu poetry, the word bayt has come to refer to two lines (like a couplet, although the two lines of a Persian, Turkic or Urdu bayt do not have to rhyme).<ref>{{Iranica|aruz-the-metrical-system|ʿARŪŻ}}</ref>
William Alexander Clouston concluded that this fundamental part of Arabic prosody originated with the Bedouins or Arabs of the desert, as, in the nomenclature of the different parts of the line, one foot is called "a tent-pole", another "tent-peg" and the two hemistichs of the verse are called after the folds or leaves of the double-door of the tent or "house".<ref name="bare_url" />
Through Ottoman Turkish,<ref name=":Dizdari">{{Cite book|title="Bejte-ja" në Fjalorin e Orientalizmave në Gjuhën Shqipe|trans-title=Dictionary of orientalisms within the Albanian language|last=Dizdari|first=Tahir|author-link=Tahir Dizdari|publisher=Instituti Shqiptar i Mendimit dhe i Qytetërimit Islam|year=2005|location=Tiranë|pages=89}}</ref> it got into Albanian as {{lang|sq|bejte}} and the bards of Muslim tradition in the Albanian literature took their name after this metrical unit, the poets known as bejtexhinj, literally meaning "couplet makers".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Elsie|first1=Robert|title=Historical Dictionary of Albania|date=2010|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=9780810861886|page=38}}</ref>
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Category:Poetic rhythm Category:Arabic and Central Asian poetics Category:Azerbaijani poetry Category:Persian poetry Category:Indian poetics Category:Sindhi folklore Category:Urdu-language poetry Category:Islamic poetry Category:Albanian poetry