Urdu Ghazals

Urdu Ghazals

In poetry (and as the lyrics in songs), the ghazal (Arabic/Persian: غزل; Turkish gazel) is a poetic form consisting of couplets which share a rhyme and a refrain. (The word "ghazal" is of Arabic origins, and is pronounced roughly like the English word "guzzle", but with a different first consonant.) Ghazal (adapted into Urdu from Persian) is a reference to the cry of a gazelle.

The form is ancient, originating in 10th century Persian verse. It is derived from the Persian qasida, which in turn derived from a pre-Islamic Arabian form. The ghazal spread into India in the 12th century under the influence of the new Islamic Sultanate courts and Sufi mystics. Although the ghazal is most prominently a form of Urdu poetry, today, it has influenced the poetry of many languages.

A Ghazal, in short, is a collection of couplets (called sher) which follow the rules of Matla, Maqta, Beher, Qaafiyaa, Radif, Khayaal and Wazan. The traditional complete ghazal has a matla, a maqta, and three other shers in between. The first two shers of a ghazal have the form of a qatha (a specific variation of which is a ruba'ee; most familiar to modern readers from Khayyám's Rubayyat).

Ghazals were written by the Persian mystics and poets Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (13th century) and Hafez (14th century), the Turkish poet Fuzuli (16th century), as well as Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869) and Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), who both wrote Ghazals in Persian and Urdu. Through the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), the ghazal became very popular in Germany in the 19th century, and the form was used extensively by Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866) and August von Platen (1796–1835). The Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali was a proponent of the form, both in English and in other languages; he edited a volume of "real ghazals in English".

The ghazal is a common song form in India and Pakistan today. Strictly speaking, it is not a musical form, but a poetic recitation. Today, however, it is commonly conceived of as an Urdu song, with prime importance given to the lyrics.

In some modernized ghazals the poet's name is hidden somewhere in the last verse, usually between the front and end of a word.