Poetry is a medium that serves to be the main cause of attraction of masses towards the literary artifacts confined in the literary treasure of any language; though, there is no denying the importance of prose itself. But, for one reason or another, poetry seems to touch eht heart and soul of a person like no other genre of literature can. Same is the case with Urdu poetry.
There are many popular forms of expression in Urdu poetry like nazm, marsia, misnavi, musaddas, etc, but nothing beats the popularity and mass acceptability of “ghazal”; a medium used to express one’s views in this language right from the time of its inception.
Ghazal dominates the popularity graph in this case. It is basically an ode whose literal meaning is “to engage in conversation with the loved one”. The lingual experts believe that this word is originated from the Arabic word “Ghizaal”, equivalent to “gazelle” in English language. It is a combination of couplets ranging from minimum of 5 to maximum of 25 (by new standards).
A “couplet” in terms of Urdu language and poetry is referred as “sher”. For Ghazal, a couplet consists of two lines; first one being called “misra-e-oola” and the second line is called as “misra-e-sani”.
The special aspect of ghazal is that it is not confined to one particular subject, and is of very diverse nature. Every couplet has a meaning of its own that is totally understandable even if it is taken as solitary. The first two rhyming lines of Urdu Ghazal are referred as “matla” and the last two lines are termed as “makta”. They also include “pen name” of the poet.
Thus it is a genre that has contributed greatly in exalting Urdu poetry to the status that it enjoys today.
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