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ghazel

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: ghazel
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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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Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Ghazel
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Type of poetic form. The word is Arabic (ghazal; "flirtation" or "love poem"), and is also seen as gazel or ghazal. A lyrical poetic mode often expressing romantic love or eroticism, the form passed into Turkish, Persian, and Urdu poetry as well.

 
 
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more