In style and content, due to its highly allusive nature, the ghazal has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central themes of love and separation. The structural requirements of the ghazal are similar in stringency to those of the Petrarchan sonnet. Ī ghazal commonly consists of five to fifteen couplets, which are independent, but are linked – abstractly, in their theme and more strictly in their poetic form. The ghazal spread into South Asia in the 12th century due to the influence of Sufi mystics and the courts of the new Islamic Sultanate, and is now most prominently a form of poetry of many languages of the Indian subcontinent and Turkey.
The ghazal form is ancient, tracing its origins to 7th-century Arabic poetry. 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 ghazal ( Arabic: غَزَل, Bengali: গজল, Hindi-Urdu: ग़ज़ल/ غزَل, Persian: غزل, Azerbaijani: qəzəl, Turkish: gazel, Turkmen: gazal, Uzbek: gʻazal, Gujarati: ગઝલ) is a form of amatory poem or ode, originating in Arabic poetry.
An illustrated headpiece from a mid-18th century collection of ghazals and rubāʻīyāt
