Yemenite Jewish Poetry

Yemenite Jewish poetry is a paraliturgical poetic tradition of Yemenite Jewish culture, encompassing both religious and secular compositions performed at social gatherings, weddings, and other ceremonial occasions. Because Yemenite Jews held to a strict prohibition on musical instruments, the tradition instead perfected singing and rhythm, blending Hebrew with Judeo-Arabic across three main performance genres, the nashid or introduction, the shirah or poem, and the hallel or praise, with men's poetry voicing national aspirations and women's songs addressing daily life. Its verse forms draw heavily on Arabic models, especially the muwashshah and zajal, and are often steeped in allegorical imagery drawn from the Kabbalah; from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries the tradition was mainly liturgical, and from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it deepened under the influence of Muslim humayni poetry, above all through the poet Shalom Shabazi, with its melodies preserved and gathered into written collections called diwans.