in the poetry of the Near and Middle Eastern peoples, a distich in any poetic genre—ghazal, qasida, rubaiyat, or mathnawi. It consists of two lines and can appear as a separate genre form. A distich must express a complete thought.

The verses making up a bayt can be rhymed or not, depending on the poetic genre. For example, in a ghazal or qasida the first bayt consists of rhymed verses and the second verses of the following bayts are rhymed with the second verse of the first bayt (a a, b a, c a . . . ). The size of a poetic composition is usually determined by the number of bayts.