Bahr (poetry)

A baḥr (from Arabic بحر, lit. 'sea'; Persian: بحر; Azerbaijani: bəhr; Turkish: bahir; Urdu: بحر; Uzbek: bahr) means a meter in Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Urdu poetry. Essentially, bahr is a specific pattern, combining the arkaan of Urdu prosody that define the "length" of a sher. However, generally bahr is categorized in three classes: Short, medium, long, depending upon the length of the sher of the ghazal.

an old manuscript in Arabic poetry, in 1841 (1)

an old Manuscript in Arabic poetry, in 184jp1 (2)

For a ghazal, since all the shers in it should be of the same bahr, determining the bahr of one sher (or even one line of the sher) is enough to determine the bahr of the entire ghazal. For example, in this ghazal of Ghalib, the length and meter of the ashaar is same throughout. In terms of the European method of scansion, the metre can be written as follows (where "x" = long or short, "u" = short, "–" = long, "u u" = one long or two short syllables):

x u – – u – u – u u –

koii ummiid bar nahiin aatii

koii suurat nazar nahiin aatii

aage aatii thii haal-e-dil pe hansii

ab kisii baat par nahiin aatii

jaanataa huun savaab-e-taa'at-o-zahad

par tabiiyat idhar nahiin aatii

hai kuchh aisii hii baat jo chup huun

varna kyaa baat kar nahiin aatii

kaabaa kis muunh se jaaoge 'Ghaalib'

sharm tum^ako magar nahiin aatii

The ghazal above is written in a bahr called: khafiif musaddas makhbuun mahzuuf maqtu (Meter G8). This is a ten-syllable bahr and by the standards of Urdu poetry, is a chotii (small) bahr.

As with the scansion of Persian poetry, a syllable such as miid or baat consisting of a long vowel plus consonant, or sharm consisting of a short vowel and two consonants, is "overlong", and counts as a long syllable + a short one.

In Urdu prosody, unlike Persian, any final long vowel can be shortened as the metre requires, for example, in the word kaabaa in the last verse above.

Taqti

Taqti is the process of breaking down words of all verses of a ghazal or a poem into fundamental syllables, calculating their weights (vazn), and checking if all verses have a consistent meter. For example, the word jaanisaar can be broken down into four syllables: jaa, ni, saa and r. The weight of jaa is 2, ni is 1, saa is 2 and r is 1, thus making the weight of the word jaanisaar 2121. Rekhta has developed a free online tool (Rekhta Taqti) that can be used to identify the bahr of any given ghazal or sher.

Types of bahr

There exist many bahrs, but mainly there are 19 bahrs used in Urdu poetry. These bahrs are further distributed in different types, but they are not described here. The names are:

• baHr-e-rajaz
• baHr-e-ramal
• baHr-e-baseet
• baHr-e-taweel
• baHr-e-kaamil
• baHr-e-mutadaarik
• baHr-e-hazaj
• baHr-e-mushaakil
• baHr-e-madeed
• baHr-e-mutaqaarib
• baHr-e-mujtas
• baHr-e-muZaara
• baHr-e-munsareH
• baHr-e-waafer
• baHr-e-qareeb
• baHr-e-saree
• baHr-e-khafeef
• baHr-e-jadeed
• baHr-e-muqtaZeb

Bibliography

• Deo, Ashwini; Kiparsky, Paul (2011). "Poetries in Contact: Arabic, Persian, and Urdu". In Maria-Kristina Lotman and Mihhail Lotman ed. Proceedings of International Conference on Frontiers in Comparative Metrics, Estonia, pp. 147–173.
• Pritchett, Frances W. (1993). "Orient Pearls Unstrung: The Quest for Unity in the Ghazal". Edebiyât vol. NS 4, pp. 119–135.
• Pritchett, Frances. "A Desert Full of Roses - The Urdu Ghazals of Mirza Assadullah Khan Ghalib".
• Thiesen, Finn (1982). A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody, with chapters on Urdu, Karakhanidic and Ottoman prosody. Wiesbaden.