Zuhdiyyat

(literally, poems on asceticism), a genre of classical Arabic poetry consisting of short lyrical and philosophical monorhymed works.

The genre began to blossom in the Arabic poetry of the eighth and ninth centuries and has partially survived in today’s imitative religious poetry. Its themes are disillusionment, vanity of life, praise of asceticism, and exhortation to spiritual self-perfection. Zuhdiyyat were usually grouped in cycles either by the poets themselves or by later compilers of their divans. Abu al-Atakhiya and Abu Tammam wrote famous zuhdiyyat cycles. The term zuhdiyyat is sometimes applied to analogous cycles of poems in Persian and Tadzhik literature.