The evolutionary development from saj‘ to rajaz to shi‘r posited by Goldziher and many others leaves us with the vexing problem of transitional forms. The dominance of synchronic generic analysis, and the extremely rigid constraints of classical Arabic shi‘r, tend to minimize the importance of other marked uses of language. For example, as noted by Devin Stewart, the medieval critics did not lavish the same care in developing an analytical toolkit for describing saj‘. This critical lacuna paralyzes us when we encounter forms of literature that fall outside of, or between, fixed categories. Within the strict confines of Khalilian literary assumptions, where shi‘r is shi‘r and other highly ordered uses of language are excluded, how would we account for different kinds of regularities within those very elements most characteristic of poetry, namely, meter and rhyme? ‘Ali’s use of syllabic meter and rhyme in his “Creation Khutbah” implicates an ideal of piety, and poses a challenge to our understanding of genre in early Arabic literature. To understand his use of syllabic meter and rhyme in his “Creation Khutbah” as merely “loose” or non-Khalilian is to miss the point. The flexibility is not simply a matter of “looseness”—a way of arbitrarily lessening the burden on the composer. Rather, a careful reading reveals that both the syllabic meter and the rhyme tightly track the khutbah’s pietistic meaning, providing a rhetorical shadow that breathes together with the text. Focusing on the dynamic interaction between regularity and violation in the syllabic meter and rhyme, the paper reveals ‘Ali’s pietistic motivations by examining how he indexes the cosmic drama of chaos and disobedience intervening in the divine order of creation. This semiotic cohesion is predicated on the skillful deployment of constraints characteristic of shi‘r, applied sensitively and to his rhetorical purpose.