One of the most distinctive and recognizable features of Persian po-etics, the refrain (radīf), entered literary history by way of a contrast with Arabic poetic norms. Defined as a word, syllable, or set of syl-lables that recurs at the conclusion of each poetic distich (couplet), radīf can be provisionally translated as “refrain.” As a slightly more technical definition has it, the radīf is “a word or words supplement-ing and following the rhyme proper and occurring without change at the end of each line.”1 Notwithstanding these descriptions, the radīf does more than simply recur, and its very repetitions generate change.2 Toward the end of the twelfth century, the Persian poet-critic Rashīd al-Dīn Vaṭvāṭ dedicated a special section of his rhetori-cal treatise, Gardens of Magic in the Nuances of Poetry, to explaining this literary device. Defining the radīf as one or more words that recur after the rhyme, Vaṭvāṭ noted that Arabic poets “do not use radīfs, except for recent innovators displaying their virtuosity.”3 El-evating the Persian refrain to the gold standard of poetic excellence, Vaṭvāṭ argued that this device effectively tests the poet’s talent (ṭabʿ) and excellence (basṭat).