From Arabian deserts to Indian hearts: The ghazal’s unbroken thread

By Vikas Meshram* 

Of all poetic forms, the ghazal is special. It holds love, separation, pain, and joy with a gentle power that few others match. In just two short lines, a sher can conjure an entire world of feeling. That is why this form has moved readers and listeners across continents for centuries. Born in the deserts of Arabia, enriched in Persian, refined in the Urdu of the Mughal courts, and later embraced by Hindi and Marathi, the ghazal absorbed something from every language and culture it touched. Yet at its core it remained unchanged: a simple, honest way of speaking about the heart.

The word ghazal comes from the Arabic taghazzul, meaning intimate conversation with a beloved or talk of women’s company. Seventh-century Arab poets first shaped it as love poetry. When Arab rule reached Persia and Arabic pressed against the Persian language, the ghazal crossed over, born of cultural collision and fusion. From the tenth century onward, Persian masters—Rudaki, Saadi, Hafiz, Rumi—gave it new depth. They did not confine it to romantic love. They wove in spirituality, Sufi thought, and the beauty of nature. Persian ghazals became known for precise use of radif and qafiya, for each sher standing complete on its own, and for layered, symbolic language. Sufi poets used the form to express love for God and the search for the true self, softening the boundary between human and divine love.

The ghazal itself grew out of the qasida, the long pre-Islamic Arabic praise poem. The opening lines of the qasida—those that spoke of missing the beloved and the loneliness of travel—broke free and became a form of their own. That is why longing remains the first note we often hear in a ghazal. Persian Sufis turned that longing toward God, toward union with the divine, toward the inward journey. When Hafiz or Rumi writes of a beloved, the figure is not always human; often it stands for God. This double meaning gave Persian ghazals their mysterious depth, a quality that later passed into Urdu and Hindi. Hafiz’s Divan is still kept in Iranian homes with near-sacred respect, consulted for guidance at the New Year. Rumi saw love itself as the path to God; his Masnavi and ghazals remain foundational to Sufi tradition worldwide.

The ghazal reached India through the courts of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. Persian was the language of power, so Persian ghazals took root. From the mixing of Persian with local Hindavi speech, Urdu itself was born. Wali Dakhani is credited with writing the first Urdu ghazals in the eighteenth century; a rich tradition followed. Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Momin Khan Momin, and Dagh Dehlvi raised the form to great heights. Ghalib in particular used the ghazal to probe life’s contradictions, the games of fate, and the larger questions of existence. Urdu ghazal became known for its free use of Persian and Arabic vocabulary, its delicate treatment of love and beauty, its Sufi undertones, and its blending of the earthly and the spiritual. Later poets—Mir Anees, Ibn-e-Insha, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Josh Malihabadi—brought fresh energy. In the twentieth century, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Hasrat Mohani, and Sahir Ludhianvi turned the ghazal into a voice of revolution and progress. In Faiz’s lines, love and the longing for justice often become inseparable. Nurtured first by the Mughals, then by the nawabs of Lucknow and the Nizams of Hyderabad, the tradition of the mushaira took shape—poets gathering on one stage, the spontaneous wah-wah of the audience still regarded as the truest measure of a ghazal’s success.

As Hindi spread during and after the freedom struggle, Hindi ghazal emerged in the late nineteenth century under strong Urdu influence. Bharatendu Harishchandra planted the seed; Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant, Mahadevi Verma, and Dharamvir Bharati gave it intellectual depth. Hindi ghazal claimed its own identity through tatsam and tadbhav vocabulary and an openness to social and national themes. After independence, Dushyant Kumar gave it sharp political edge; his direct criticism of the system turned the form into a mirror held up to society. Singers and writers such as Jagjit Singh and Gulzar carried it into ordinary homes. Later poets—Nida Fazli, Bashir Badr, Rahat Indori—brought it closer to everyday speech, while Parveen Shakir and Kaifi Azmi added notes of women’s experience and social change. Through all these stages, Hindi-Urdu ghazal remained both classical and accessible.

Marathi ghazal arrived later, in the early twentieth century. At first, poets debated whether it was merely a metre or a distinct form. Madhav Julian settled the question. Between 1922 and 1933 his collection Gazzalanjali introduced pure Arabic-Persian metres into Marathi and established the ghazal as an independent, carefully structured genre. It was Suresh Bhat, however, who planted it firmly in Marathi soil. With Roopgandha in 1961 and the work that followed, he made metre, syllable count, radif, and qafiya intelligible to ordinary readers. He earned the title Ghazalsamrat—emperor of the ghazal—because the form no longer remained confined to literary circles. Alongside poets such as Vinda Karandikar, Shanta Shelke, Sudhir Moghe, Narayan Surve, Grace, F. M. Shinde, and later writers like Ilahi Jamadar, Sureshchandra Nadkarni, and U. R. Giri, Bhat helped Marathi ghazal develop its own voice: images of rural life, engagement with social questions, and inventive use of familiar Marathi landscapes. Love and separation remain powerful in his work, yet some of his poems strike hard against inequality and systemic failure. Later poets continued the conversation, writing of urban stress, migration, and changing family ties. Today hundreds of Marathi ghazal collections appear each year, sustained by a living teacher-student tradition. Gatherings in Suresh Bhat’s name still draw audiences in cities such as Pune. Compared with Urdu and Hindi, Marathi ghazal is often held to a stricter metrical standard, remaining faithful to the pure tradition Julian established. While Urdu inherits centuries-old symbols—the candle and moth, the rose and nightingale—Marathi ghazal is still forging its own imagery, a sign of its continuing freshness.

To understand the ghazal is to understand its architecture. A typical ghazal contains five to fifteen couplets. Each couplet—two lines forming a sher—is a complete poem in itself, independent of the others. The opening sher, in which both lines share the same radif (the repeated end-phrase) and qafiya (the rhyme), is the matla. In subsequent shers only the second line carries the radif and qafiya. This pattern gives the form its distinctive rhythm. Economy of language is its greatest strength: saying the most with the fewest words. The final sher, the maqta, traditionally contains the poet’s pen name—Ghalib signing as “Ghalib,” Suresh Bhat often as “Suresh.” Writing a fine ghazal is craft as much as inspiration; it demands mastery of metre, careful choice of words, and patient revision.

At the centre of the ghazal stands the full range of human feeling, with separation often the most insistent note: the ache of absence, the mind rocking on memory, the longing for reunion, the sharp edge of loneliness. Love in all its shades—first wonder, fierce passion, difficulty, and its quiet turn into Sufi devotion—remains the heart of the form. Joy appears as well: the pleasure of meeting, the quiet contentment of small moments, the beauty of moonlight, spring, jasmine, and dew-covered dawn. The ghazal has also spoken of broken hearts, social inequality, and anger against injustice.

Another distinguishing quality is that the ghazal is meant to be heard as well as read. Urdu ghazal travelled the world through the art of ghazal singing. Hindi ghazal entered homes through voices such as Jagjit Singh’s. In Marathi, many of Suresh Bhat’s ghazals live on as bhavgeet and natyasangeet. The marriage of word and music deepens its hold. Structure varies slightly across languages: Persian and Urdu adhere strictly to the Arabic system of bahr; Hindi has taken a freer approach with matravrutta; Marathi has sought to honour both while remaining true to the pure Arabic-Persian metres. Choosing the right radif and qafiya requires a fine ear; a mismatched rhyme can fracture the whole. Experienced poets often spend weeks refining a single ghazal.

The ghazal’s popularity has not faded. Social media has given it a new stage. Young singers and poets share their work directly with millions on YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms. Mushairas now reach global audiences through online broadcasts. Indian cinema has kept the form alive in countless Hindi and Marathi film songs built on its structure. The ghazal is not a museum piece. It is a living, evolving tradition still being shaped with the same creativity that marked its earlier centuries. Having risen from Arabian deserts, blossomed in the Persian garden, and found new life in Urdu, Hindi, and Marathi, it remains tied to feelings that never age: love, separation, pain, and joy. As long as the human heart remains what it is, the ghazal will continue to hold up its small, two-line mirror to that heart, generation after generation.

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*Contact: vikasmeshram04@gmail.com