Ghazal (redirected from Ghazaal)

ghazel

 or ghazal or gazel

In Islamic literature, a lyric poem, generally short and graceful in form and typically dealing with love. The genre developed in late 7th-century Arabia. Ghazels begin with a rhymed couplet whose rhyme is repeated in all subsequent even lines, while the odd lines are unrhymed. The two main types of ghazel are native to the Hejaz (what is now western Saudi Arabia) and Iraq. It reached its greatest refinement in the works of Hafez. American poets such as Adrienne Rich have used variations of the form.

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Ghazal 

a monorhymed lyrical poem, consisting usually of five to 12 bayt couplets; common in the poetry of the Near and Middle East and in Southeast Asia. As a genre, the ghazal developed from popular lyrical song, probably in the seventh century, and took its final shape in the 13th and 14th centuries. Only the second misra (hemistich) rhymes, except in the first bayt (matla) in which both misras rhyme. The rhyming pattern is aa, ba, ca, da. In the last bayt (maqta) the tahallus (pseudonym of the author) must be mentioned. As a rule, every bayt of the ghazal contains a completed thought with a self-contained meaning. Outstanding Persian and Tadjik poets (such as Saadi, Hafiz, Kamal, and later Jami), as well as Uzbek (Alisher Navoi) and Azerbaijani (Nizami) poets, have composed classical examples of the ghazal. Certain European poets who turned to Oriental themes used the ghazal form, including Goethe, Bodenstedt, and, in Russia, V. Briusov.

REFERENCES

Bertel’s, E. E. Persidskaia poeziia v Bukhare v X veke. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935.
Braginskii, I. S. “O vozniknovenii gazeli v tadzhikskoi i persidskoi literature.” Sovetskoe vostokovedenie, 1958, no. 2.
Mirzoev, A. M. Rudaki i razvitie gazeli v X-XV vv. Stalinabad, 1958.

N. B. KONDYREVA

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Ghazal 

(Bahr al-Ghazal), a river in the southwestern Sudan, a left tributary of the White Nile. The Bahr al-Ghazal is formed by the confluence of the Bahr al-Arab and the Jur River at the town of Ghabat al-Arab. Measured from the place of confluence, it is approximately 240 km long. It flows through vast swamps. Düring the summer rains navigation is possible up to the town of Waw on the Jur River. After the water level falls, the Bahr al-Ghazal is navigable from the place of confluence of its headstreams.