An Arabic Origin of the Persian Rubā‘ī?

The Persian rubā‘ī appeared in the first half of the fourth/10th century, displaying a peculiar metre and two rhyme schemes. According to indigenous literary history, the rubā‘ī was simply ‘invented’ in Persia. Western philologists have either accepted this view and tried to find earlier Persian quatrains as forerunners, or they have pointed to an alleged tradition of Turkish four-liners that could have influenced the emergence of the genre. A third view is that Arabic poetry could have played a role, as it is the case in some other instances. The article tries to advance this latter hypothesis, building mainly on the Dīwān of Khālid Ibn Yazīd al-Kātib (d. c. 270/884), which almost exclusively consists of four-liners.