Ghazals

One cannot look at poetry without looking at Ghazals. In my experience, Pakistani poetry tends to revolve around the ghazal form: Abida Parveen, Farida Khanum, and Nayyara Noor often utilise this form in their music. These artists have so much popularity within Pakistan: they are extremely widely known, and Abida Parveen, one of the greats, is still producing poetic music today (albeit in a slightly different form). 

Ghazals evolved from an Arabic style of poetry called a Qasida, long poems often used to either emphasise the brilliance or power of Islamic leaders, or teach morality to individuals living within Islamic controlled areas in the 7th century. Whilst this poetry tended to be quite pragmatic, the prelude of these types of poems were called nasibs, which were often oversensationalised and dramatised, with a strong focus on romance and other more stereotypically poetic themes. These nasibs were them adapted to become standalone, and from there, the foundation of what ghazals are today was born. The influence of these types of poems expanded far and wide, as the Islamic empire was at its peak during the time. These poems were altered in Persia, and were then brought to the Indian Subcontinent by Sufi scholars, where the poems were translated into a mix of local languages and dialects to create the Ghazal that remains so influential today. City centres became hubs for the arts and culture, and Ghazals and other poetic forms became imperative in maintaining this culture. 

Ghazals are not very strict in terms of structure: they often consist of five or more couplets (which are often quite long), and they tend to rhyme at the end of both lines in the couplet. 

Urdu Ghazals in their very nature have a strong link to romance and religion, where the two themes tend to intertwine. Sufi-ism is a sect of Islam, where god is revered through music and dance. The entire ideology of Sufi-ism is that god is seen as someone to love, rather than someone that should be feared. The father of the Urdu ghazal himself was Wali Gujarati, a Muslim who adapted what was originally a poetic form in Persian and Arabic into the language during Mughal rule. 

Ghazals have long had a forum in the subcontinent, and mushairas have been an important part of that. Mushairas have long played an important role in subcontinental culture; they are free forums where poetry was read without many barriers, and these open forums have allowed for the adaptation and manipulation of themes in the ghazal form. Ghazals have remained very romantic despite the evolutions of them, and that is a part of the reason they are so popular; their romantic themes have meant that they have become very popular in media: ghazals are often sang to music, and played in movies. 

However, the influence of Ghazals have started to wane, as the romantic society of the 12th and 13th century subcontinent where they were first introduced has long gone. Indian artists have started to move away from creating and popularising this form of poetry: Ghazals are synonymous with not only Islam, but with Urdu. In an environment where right-wing pro-Hindu and pro-Hindi nationalism is on the rise, the ghazal form has been largely restricted to being popular mainly in Pakistan, especially in recent years. 

However, even in Pakistan, the influence has started to fade. Mushairas are nowhere near as widespread or popular since they were in the 1970s, and so forums for this poetry have started to vanish. Pakistani society has also recently become very fundamentalist of late, and so this idea of love in music has started to lose traction amongst many of the lower ranks in Pakistani society, who tend to be more religious. 

Ghazals will live on, but the popularity of them may not. 

In some upcoming posts, I will look at some specific artists who utilise the ghazal form in their works, and will include examples of it.