Formally speaking, a ghazal is a set of two-line verses (they aren't technically 'couplets', since in most of them the two lines don't rhyme). Ideally there are to be an odd number of them, and ideally the number is to be something like seven or nine. They share a strictly-defined Arabic-derived quantitative meter; for a full account see A Practical Handbook of Urdu Meter [site]. And at the end of each verse they also share a common rhyme syllable, and after it usually common refrain word(s) as well. Beyond this, the verses of a ghazal share only the larger ghazal universe of stylized characters, scenes, actions, and images. A ghazal, in short, is a series of semantically independent two-line mini-poems that have a strong formal unity-- but usually no particular unity beyond that. Thus in performance, oral reciters and singers freely reorder the verses of a ghazal, and almost always omit a good number of them.

The first verse of a ghazal commonly incorporates the rhyme and refrain at the end of both lines, instead of only at the end of the second line. If it does this, it's called an 'opening-verse'. Under oral performance conditions, this feature enables the listeners to perceive the formal structure of the ghazal more quickly. The last verse commonly includes the poet's chosen pen-name; if it does this, it's called a 'closing-verse'. Both these features reflect the ghazal's expectation of oral performance.

The traditional venue for oral performance was the mushairah, which consisted of a smallish group of patrons, connoisseurs, master-poets ('Ustads'), and apprentices. Most mushairahs were based on a 'pattern' line announced in advance, so that everybody's ghazals were formally identical (sharing meter, rhyme, and refrain). This made them extremely comparable, so that individual achievement stood out most strikingly. Poets recited in order of increasing seniority; because of the emphasis on apprenticeship over time and the required mastery of technical skills, the seniormost poets were politely assumed to be the finest. Everybody had a small notebook in which he (women rarely attended mushairahs) quickly jotted down verses that struck his fancy, for later discussion with friends. Famous poets were the rock stars of their day; bands of their apprentices were even known to riot when they encountered each other in the streets of Lucknow. Although the majority of ghazal poets were upper- or middle-class Muslim men, ghazals by women, by people of other religions (including Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians), and people of working-class backgrounds, are amply documented. For details of this literary culture, and its self-documentation in anthologies called 'tazkirahs', see 'A Long History' ([site]).

All poetry is made out of other poetry, but not all poetry is glad of it; the ghazal, however, delights in its huge treasury of earlier verses. The very origins of Urdu poetry included macaronic (mixed) Persian/Urdu lines and verses; the classical training for a poet included memorizing literally thousands of verses by earlier Persian and Urdu Ustads. There were various technical terms for the deliberate or inadvertent use of another poet's line, or idea, or image. If deliberate, it was either a tribute or a challenge-- or usually both; if inadvertent, was it creative coincidence, innovative development, or vulgar imitation? And was every usage of the early masters sacred, or should modern idiom be given precedence? Mushairahs also functioned as technical workshops in which issues like these could be publically addressed.

The ghazal is the (usually first-person) voice of a passionate lover who laments his lack of access to his beloved. This lover is always construed as masculine. In some verses the beloved is very clearly feminine (as for example when women's clothing is mentioned); she is then either a courtesan, or an inaccessible lady in pardah. In other verses the beloved is very clearly masculine (as when the beginnings of the coquettish adolescent boy's beard are said to appear). In most verses, the sex of the beloved can't be decided for sure. This undecideability is partly due to the brevity of the verses, and to the emphasis on the lover's feelings rather than descriptions of the beloved. In Persian, it's also due to the nature of the grammar: verb endings don't vary with gender. In Urdu, the beloved is always treated as grammatically masculine.

Some modern readers have worried over the depiction of the beloved as a beautiful boy; the implications of pederasty worry them. But if the beloved can be envisioned as a beautiful boy or a courtesan, he can also be God, and plainly the ghazal is the very reverse of autobiographical. Similarly, the lover can speak as a caged bird, a hunted animal, a naked madman, a drunkard, or a voice from beyond the grave. The point is the transgressiveness, the liminality, the rush to break out of this flawed, doomed, limited mortal world into a larger, truer universe. The moth flying into the candle flame is one of the ghazal's emblematic images; the burning, melting, self-consuming candle itself is another; and the blossoming rose whose 'smile' is also her death-warrant is a third.

The classical ghazal world, with its aristocratic patronage and its famous Ustads, was killed off in the aftermath of 1857. Ghazals nowadays are often either obscure and elite, printed in small poetry journals, orelse popular and 'filmi', composed along moon-June-spoon lines for Hindi-Urdu films. Modern mushairahs too are greatly changed: they tend to be public performances, like concerts, presided over by popular emcees who adjust the performances to the mood of the audience. To some extent they constitute a middle ground between the elite and the popular.

Further resources: S. R. Faruqi and F. W. Pritchett, 'Lyric Poetry in Urdu: the Ghazal' [site]; F. W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness [ site]; A Desertful of Roses, 'Bibliography' [site]; the work of S. R. Faruqi [site].