Ghazal is a poem, usually about love, pain in love, or beauty of love/lover, and is made of a collection of couplets.
One such couplet is called a Sher.
The example below has 3 Shers.
Zindagi yun hui basar tanhaa
Qaafilaa saath aur safar tanhaa
Apane saaye se chaunk jaate hain
Umr guzari hai is qadar tanhaa
Raat bhar bolate hain sannaate
Raat kaate koyi kidhar tanhaa
The Shers have to meet some criteria before a Ghazal can be called a Ghazal.
Criterion 1: The Sher should be enough to convey a full message i.e. it should be relevant to the listener even without listening to anything before or after it.
In the example above, none of the Shers needs assistance from any above or below to make sense.
Criterion 2: Each sentence of the Sher should be of the same length; this length is called a Beher (meter of the Sher) and Beher could be small, medium, or long.
All the Shers in our example are of small Beher.
Criterion 3: The second lines of all the Shers in a Ghazal should end with the same last word or couple of words; the repeating common words are called Radiff.
In the example above, ‘tanhaa’ is the Radiff.
Criterion 4: The words just before the Radiff should have a rhyming pattern; this rhyming pattern is called Kaafiya or Qaafiya.
In the example, safar, qadar & kidhar are Kaafiyas.
Criterion 5: The first Sher of a Ghazal should have the same last word(s) – Radiffs – in both the sentences; the first Sher is called a Matla.
In the Matla of the example, both sentences have the same Radiff.
The last Sher usually gives reference to the poet, as a way of his/her signature – basically poet’s pen name; because of this reference of the poet, the last Sher is called Maqta.
