Ghazal

The ghazal (Arabic/Pashto/Malay/Persian/Urdu: غزل‎; Hindi: ग़ज़ल, Punjabi: ਗ਼ਜ਼ਲ, Turkish: gazel, Bengali: গ়জ়ল, Gujarati: ગ઼ઝલ) is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th-century Arabic verse. It is derived from the Arabian panegyric qasida. The structural requirements of the ghazal are similar in stringency to those of the Petrarchan sonnet. In style and content it is a genre that has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central themes of love and separation. It is one of the principal poetic forms which the Indo-Perso-Arabic civilization offered to the eastern Islamic world.