qafiyah/classical-arabic-poetry

Dataset Card for Qafiyah

Dataset Summary

Qafiyah is a comprehensive dataset of classical Arabic poetry, containing over 84,000 poems from 900+ poets across 10 historical eras. Each entry includes the full poem text, individual verses, and rich metadata such as poet details, era, meter, themes, and rhyme patterns.

The dataset is derived from the open-source Qafiyah project, which provides a public website, REST API, and database dumps for Arabic poetry research.

Dataset Structure

Data Fields

Field	Type	Description
poem_id	int64	Unique poem identifier
poem_slug	string	URL-friendly poem slug
title	string	Poem title
content	string	Full poem text (raw format with * separators)
poet_name	string	Poet name
poet_slug	string	URL-friendly poet slug
poet_bio	string	Poet biography
era_name	string	Historical era name
era_slug	string	URL-friendly era slug
meter_name	string	Poetic meter name (بحر)
meter_slug	string	URL-friendly meter slug
theme_name	string	Primary theme name (غرض)
theme_slug	string	URL-friendly theme slug
rhyme_pattern	string	Rhyme pattern (قافية)
verses	list[string]	Individual verses (أبيات)
text	string	Formatted full text (verses joined by newlines)

Data Splits

Split	Examples
train	84,329+

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
ds = load_dataset("qafiyah/classical-arabic-poetry")

# Access a poem
poem = ds["train"][0]
print(f"Title: {poem['title']}")
print(f"Poet: {poem['poet_name']}")
print(f"Era: {poem['era_name']}")
print(f"\nVerses:")
for verse in poem['verses']:
    print(f"  {verse}")

Filtering by Era

# Get poems from the Abbasid era
abbasid_poems = ds["train"].filter(lambda x: x["era_slug"] == "abbasid")
print(f"Found {len(abbasid_poems)} Abbasid poems")

Filtering by Meter

# Get poems in the Tawil meter (الطويل)
tawil_poems = ds["train"].filter(lambda x: x["meter_slug"] == "tawil")
print(f"Found {len(tawil_poems)} poems in Tawil meter")

Historical Eras

The dataset covers these historical periods:

1. Pre-Islamic (الجاهلي) - Before 622 CE
2. Early Islamic (صدر الإسلام) - 622-661 CE
3. Umayyad (الأموي) - 661-750 CE
4. Abbasid (العباسي) - 750-1258 CE
5. Andalusian (الأندلسي) - 711-1492 CE
6. Mamluk (المملوكي) - 1250-1517 CE
7. Ottoman (العثماني) - 1517-1798 CE
8. Modern (الحديث) - 1798-present

Licensing Information

This dataset is released under the MIT license.

Citation

@misc{qafiyah2025,
  title={Qafiyah: A Dataset of Classical Arabic Poetry},
  author={Qafiyah Contributors},
  year={2025},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/qafiyah/classical-arabic-poetry}
}

Additional Resources

• Project website: qafiyah.com
• API: api.qafiyah.com
• Source repository: github.com/alwalxed/qafiyah
• Database dumps: Available in the repository under public/datasets/