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Is it permissible for a poet to raise a genitive, or to put a nominative or accusative in the genitive case, for the sake of the rhyme's meter, based on the rule "what is permissible for poetry is not permissible for others"?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Linguists have agreed on the permissibility of deviating from some grammatical rules in poetry but not in prose, due to the restrictiveness of poetry and its connection to meter and rhyme. Sibawayh and Ibn Hisham mentioned that what is permissible in poetry is more than can be enumerated. A nominative may be given the accusative case, and an accusative may be given the nominative case, if there is no ambiguity, as in His Almighty's saying: "The nail tore the garment," and "The stone broke the glass," and "Like porcupines, they are wanderers; their evil reached Najran, or their evil reached Hajar." This is not to be used as a general rule, but rather is restricted to what has been heard. Some defined poetic necessity as that which was committed in poetry but not committed in prose, and which the poet had no alternative but to commit.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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