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Syair is a form of traditional Malay poetry that is made up of four-line stanzas or quatrains. The syair can be a narrative poem, a didactic poem, a poem used to convey ideas on religion or philosophy, or even one to describe a historical event. The word syair is derived from the Arabic word shi’r, a term that covers all genres of Arabic/Islamic poetry. However, the Malay form which goes by the name syair is somewhat different and not modelled on Arabic poetry or on any of the genres of Perso-Arab poetry. The earliest known record of syair is from the work of Hamzah Fansuri, a famous Malay poet in the 17th century.The most famous syair is a 1847 poem by Raja Pengiran Indera Mahkota Shahbandar: Syair Rakis. It is considered to be the passage to modern Malaysian literature. Many characteristics of the Malay syair have become standard items in handbooks and textbooks concerned with classical Malay literature. These works uniformly agree that the syair consists of a series of quatrains containing an ongoing story. The final syllable of each line (kerat) within a stanza (bait or rangkap or untai) rhymes with every other final syllable of that stanza (aaaa, bbbb, .... ). Furthermore, the line generally consists of four words with a more or less definable caesura (jeda) after the second word. Syair has a continuous story throughout the quatrain and between quatrains.