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Ghazal
In poetry (and as the lyrics in songs), the ghazal (Arabic/Persian/Urdu; Turkish gazel) is a poetic form consisting of couplets which share a rhyme and a refrain. The word literaly refers to "the mortal cry of a gazelle". The animal is caled Ghizaal, from which the English word gazelles stems, or Kastori haran (where haran refers to deer) in Urdu. The allegory stems from the notion that Ghazals are usually the expression of love, separation, and loneliness, (these ideas being usually interlinked in the same Ghazal) much to the likeness of musk-developing gazelles, who must be killed to obtain the sweet fragrance they produce. The plaintive, mortal cry that the doe makes upon being killed can be etymologically likened to the painful experience of separation or loss of love. Hence the name and, indeed, inspiration of Ghazal (cf. "Bahr el Ghazal").
The form is ancient, originating in 10th century Persian verse. It is derived from the Persian qasida, which in turn comes from the Arabic form of verse. Formally a short lyric composed in a single metre with a single rhyme throughout, in its style and content it is a genre which has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central theme of love. The ghazal is thus itself one of the most striking examples of those successful cultural artefacts, consisting of a seemingly infinitely adaptable combination of essentially simple elements, which are so characteristic of the Persianate civilization of the eastern Islamic world.
The ghazal spread into South Asia in the 12th century under the influence of the new Islamic Sultanate courts and Sufi mystics. Exotic to the region, as is indicated by the very sounds of the name itself when properly pronounced as ġazal, with its very un-Indian initial rolled g. Although the ghazal is most prominently a form of Urdu poetry, today, it has influenced the poetry of many languages. Some famous ghazals such as Chhaap tilak by Aamir Khusro are in fact written in the Braj Bhasha dialect.
A Ghazal, in short, is a collection of couplets (called sher) which follow the rules of Matla, Maqta, Beher, Qafiya, 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.
From: Wikipedia.com
