Zajal
Quick answer: Zajal is a strophic poem in colloquial Arabic, born in medieval Spain and still performed in sung poetry duels in Lebanon today. Learn its story and craft.
A zajal is a strophic poem composed entirely in colloquial Arabic, the spoken language rather than the classical literary register. Born in al-Andalus as the muwashshah's street-singing cousin, it uses similar stanza-and-refrain patterns but abandons classical grammar altogether, which made it portable, popular and slightly disreputable in the eyes of court critics. The great master of the Andalusi zajal was Ibn Quzman of Cordoba, whose twelfth-century songbook is one of the liveliest documents of medieval city life.
The zajal never died. It travelled east and settled in the Levant, where Lebanese zajal remains a living art: teams of poets improvise sung verse duels before large audiences, trading boasts and arguments in metre, and the tradition now appears on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.
How Zajal Works
Like the muwashshah, a zajal cycles through stanzas whose rhymes change, held together by a returning refrain rhyme; unlike the muwashshah, every word stays in dialect. That choice changes everything: the poem gains the speed, humour and bite of talk. Ibn Quzman filled his zajals with markets, wine, unreliable patrons and love trouble, sketched with a comedian's timing. The vernacular is not a simplification but an instrument; it can say things classical diction is too dressed up to say.
The Living Tradition
In Lebanon, and in Palestinian, Syrian and diaspora communities, zajal is a performance sport. Poets improvise within known metres and melodies, answering each other stanza for stanza while a chorus and audience respond; a good duel mixes flattery, insult and philosophy in the same breath. This improvised, competitive verse is one of the closest living relatives of what poetry slams reinvented elsewhere, and it descends from techniques the Andalusis perfected nine centuries ago.
Writing in Your Own Vernacular
The zajal's lesson for any poet is permission: your spoken language is a full poetic instrument. Try drafting a stanza in exactly the words you would use across a kitchen table, then shaping the rhythm without translating the diction upward. An invented example of the register: 'He owes me three summers and a ladder, that man; / God keep his roof leaking till he pays.' If the line sounds like a person, the zajal spirit is in it.
What poets can take from this
- Draft in your speaking voice first and impose shape second; the order matters in this form.
- Use refrains the way singers do, as places for an audience to join in.
- Let humour and complaint share a stanza; the zajal has never respected the border between them.
- Improvise aloud to a beat before writing; the form was born in performance, not on paper.
- Keep dialect spellings consistent so readers hear one voice, not typographical noise.
Try it yourself
Write three stanzas of complaint about something small and unfair, in your everyday spoken register, with a one-line refrain an audience could chant back after each stanza.
Questions
What is the difference between zajal and muwashshah?
Both are strophic Andalusi song forms, but the muwashshah is in classical Arabic or Hebrew with a vernacular ending at most, while the zajal is in colloquial Arabic throughout.
Is zajal still performed today?
Yes, most famously in Lebanon, where improvised sung zajal duels between teams of poets draw large audiences and the practice is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.
Who was the greatest zajal poet?
Ibn Quzman of twelfth-century Cordoba is the classical master; his surviving songbook made the form's reputation. In the modern Levantine tradition, champions of the sung duel hold comparable fame regionally.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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