The building blocks of Urdu Poetry

Urdu poetry is a very diverse and colorful experience, one that is capable to express itself very artistically and explicitly. It started its journey from as early as 11th century A.D and has undergone quite extravagant evolution to appear to us in its present form.

Although it is a very intricate subject capable of expressing itself in various different forms, there are certain basic ingredients that set the foundation of Urdu poetry, and are taken to be its building blocks.

“Ghazal” is the most dominant of its forms, constituting of almost all the basic elements that are key components of Urdu poetry in general:

• Bahar: It basically serves to be the measuring unit that takes count of the length of a couplet. Each line of a couplet must be the same as the preceding one. Additionally, every single couplet in a ghazal must be having the same “bahar”. There are 19 different types of “bahar” which can be further categorized as short, medium, and long meters.

• Radeef: It refers to the same word or phrase that is repeated at the end of second line of every couplet, and it is quite mandatory that Radeef shall be constituted of exact same words for whole of the ghazal.

• Matla: It refers to the first couplet of a ghazal. It is also mandatory that both lines of a ghazal’s “matla” end with a “radeef”.

• Maqta: The pen name of a poet is termed as “takhallus” in Urdu poetry. Usually, the last couplet of ghazal containing “takhallus” is called as “maqta”.

• Qafiya: It refers to the rhyming pattern that is followed just before the “radeef” at the end of every couplet. Qafiya is one convention that is to be followed strictly be every Urdu poem, even when other conventions are not followed strictly at times.

These are the building blocks raising the foundation of Urdu poetry and their knowledge is a must for those who want to learn about the subject.