Meaning
Quatrains — the plural of rubai; four-line poems, each a complete thought, made famous in the West by the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Literally: plural of rubai (a quatrain, from 'four')
Related words
ARABIC
Rubai
A quatrain — a self-contained four-line poem in a fixed metre, usually rhyming AABA, often epigrammatic or philosophical.
ARABIC
Qat'a
A short poem, usually of two or more couplets, developing a single continuous thought — unlike the ghazal, whose couplets each stand alone.
ARABIC
Nazm
A poem developed around a single connected theme, as opposed to the ghazal's discrete couplets.