The Art of Al Razha

The art of sword fencing .. and the art of poetic exchange.

In the past it was a means of collective expression of people's demands to the walis; it was also a means of declaring war, mustering warriors, declaring victory, or mediating between disputants in order to reconcile them.

It begins with the cry of the drums, where the men gather to settle their affair, then the poet of each tribe improvises that which chronicles the event for which they have gathered.

The men also gather for the Razha with the aim of recreation and of displaying the skill of those among them capable of fencing and combat with sword and shield, and the tribes' poets vie in their skill in verses of love, praise, satire, riddles and enigmas. It is the literary image of fencing with the sword.

The Razha is a name indicating that the player with the sword "razah" (groans) under its weight — that is, the weight of the sword — and that he must bear this weight while leaping high into the air and catching it by its hilt when it descends again, representing a kind of boasting among the men of the Razha, "whatever the weight of the sword or the sharpness of its blade".

The types of Razha differ according to the movement of its participants, the type and speed of the rhythm governing the movement, the poetic metre that makes up the singing of its shillat, and then the theme the poet improvises.

The types of Razha are names, each indicating one of its attributes, connected either to the verse or the movement, or attributing it to a particular place. Among the most prominent of these names is the Razha Mashuba, in which the verse is love poetry or praise; and also the Razha of the Harbiyat, the Razha of the Hawama, the Razha Khalidiyya, and the Razha of the Nahiya. When two tribes meet in a Razha, each brings its own drum, the drums often inherited generation after generation, thin on both faces. The drum of the side that has the singing shilla — that is, whose turn it is in the poetic singing — does not cry out until after the row has been taught the text of the "shilla" in verse and melody.

The two drummers move between the two parallel, facing rows until the singing of the shilla is complete. Then the drums of the one side fall silent for the drums of the other side to cry out a new shilla, usually a reply to the first shilla; then the poetic shillat — sung — follow one another, alternating between the two rows until the Razha achieves the aims for which it was convened.