The short rhythms are the ones that run. Five of them written out stroke by stroke from the notation — and once they sit side by side, three of the five turn out to hit the same three points in the bar and differ only in which stroke lands where.
Written by M III D O · 4 October 2026
Arabic rhythms are cycles called iqa'at (singular iqa'), each defined by one prototype bar of two sounds: the low, sustained dum and the dry, sharp tak. According to the Maqam World reference, the small time signatures — 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 — are mostly used in folk music, in the tarab songs of the mid-twentieth century and in contemporary pop, while the long cycles belong to the older muwashahat.
The same reference is clear that the written bar is a skeleton. Players flesh it out with extra dums, taks and whatever else the drum can do, depending on the genre, the arrangement and their own style. So read the grids below as the bones, not as the part.
The darbuka guide already covers Malfuf, the best known of the 2/4 family. This piece is about the other five.
Each grid is one bar of 2/4 split into eight sixteenths. The line down the middle is beat two.
Used mainly in Sufi music, in some folk music and in raqs sharqi. In Egypt it is sometimes called Zar, after a folk healing ceremony led by women playing hand-held percussion. The source describes its feel as rapid, short and cyclical.
Listed examples: the muwashah Atani Zamani; Tajallat Wa-njalat Laylan by Sheikh Hamza Shakkur and Ensemble Al Kindi.
A fast Egyptian rhythm for folk music. The source notes that it can look like maqsum played at double speed but feels very different, because Fallahi flows smoothly without a big accent contrast between dum and tak. The notation writes two of its strokes as Ka; in darbuka playing that is generally the tak struck by the other hand, usually a little lighter.
Listed examples: Hizz Ya Hubb and Salametha Umm Hasan, both sung by Ahmad Adaweya; il-Benti Beida by Metqal Qannawi.
The name probably comes from the foxtrot. It is usually played under instrumental sections without much ornament, often very fast, which gives it a swift, urgent feel. It is the main rhythm of the longa, the Ottoman instrumental form. A very slow Fox could just as well be written in 4/4.
Listed examples: Longa Farahfaza by Riyad al-Sunbati; Umm Kulthum's Ghulubt Asalih Fi Ruhi (1946); Farid al-Atrash's instrumental Tuta (1942).
A member of the same family with a lazy feel, and it can be played at relatively slow tempos. It modulates often to and from Malfuf without sharing Malfuf's rapid, urgent character.
Listed examples, all Umm Kulthum: Siret il-Hubb (1964) and Ba'id 'Annak (1965) by Baligh Hamdi; Amal Hayati (1965), Fakkaruni (1966) and Darit il-Ayyam (1970) by Muhammad Abdel Wahab.
A simple rhythm used under both singing and instrumental phrases. Wahda means one — the single dum in the bar — and saghira means small. Its other name, basita, means simple.
Listed examples: Umm Kulthum's al-Atlal (1966) and Darit il-Ayyam (1970); Abdel Halim Hafez's 'Ala Hesb Widad Albi (1953) and Nibtidi Mnein el-Hikaya (1975).
D dum · T tak · Ka lighter tak, other hand · · rest
Put Ayyub, Karachi and Wahda Saghira on top of each other and the hits fall in exactly the same places: the first sixteenth, beat two, and the "and" of two. Nothing else. What makes them three different rhythms is only the choice of stroke on those three points — that reading is mine, but it is all there in the notation.
The other two fill the gap. Fox adds a tak on the "and" of one, so the bar alternates dum and tak evenly from start to finish. Fallahi fills the whole first beat with sixteenths — and its second beat, dum then tak, is the same back half that maqsum, baladi and saidi share in the darbuka guide, here at double speed.
This is the useful part for writing: three rhythms you can switch between by changing which sample sits on a step, without moving a single step.
The source pages say these rhythms rarely stay alone. Fox modulates readily to Malfuf and back. Karachi modulates often to and from Malfuf. Malfuf itself moves to and from the other 2/4 rhythms, and two bars of Malfuf can turn into one bar of a 4/4 rhythm like baladi or maqsum.
You can see it in the song lists. Amal Hayati is given as an example of both Karachi and Malfuf; Darit il-Ayyam appears under both Karachi and Wahda Saghira. A long song is not in one rhythm — the percussion changes with the section.
The source stops at the notation. Everything in this section is mine, from making this music.
FL Studio's step sequencer starts at sixteen steps — one bar of 4/4 in sixteenths. A 2/4 rhythm fills eight of them, so it is written twice per bar. Keep the first copy exactly as the notation has it and use the second for small variation — an extra ka, a ghost note — never for moving the skeleton.
Usually the advice is to make the dum and the tak contrast. Fallahi is the exception the source points at: its smoothness comes from the strokes sitting close in level. Keep the dum and tak velocities near each other and put the two kas only slightly under them.
Fox is played without much ornament, so a fill on every bar works against it. Let the even alternation run, and save the variation for the end of a phrase.
Karachi's character is that late dum. Do not put a kick on the first sixteenth to "fix" the missing low end at the top of the bar — that is exactly the gap that makes it lean.
In a 4/4 track, two bars of Malfuf into one bar of maqsum is the handover the source describes, and it makes a clean way into a drop or out of a break.
Middle Eastern Drumkit is free and has the darbuka dum, tak and slap as one-shots, plus riq, duff and sagat — enough to build every grid on this page. Neon Souq has tabla and sagat played as loops, if you want to hear the ornament that goes on top of a skeleton.
The rhythms above are read from the notation published by Maqam World for Ayyub, Fallahi, Fox, Karachi, Wahda Saghira and Malfuf; the descriptions and song examples are the ones those pages give. Maqam World is by Johnny Farraj, co-author with Sami Abu Shumays of Inside Arabic Music (Oxford University Press). The shared-skeleton reading and the programming notes are mine.