How to Write a Ghazal
In brief: A necklace of couplets, each one a complete jewel, all strung on a single repeated word. The ghazal is longing given architecture.
The ghazal rose in seventh-century Arabia, blossomed in Persian, and reached one of its great summits in Urdu, where masters like Mirza Ghalib made it the beating heart of South Asian poetry. Sung in courts and dargahs, quoted in films and letters, the ghazal has always lived closer to ordinary people than most forms ever manage. Its traditional territory is ishq, longing: for a beloved, for the divine, for a home or a self just out of reach.
Structurally, a ghazal is a chain of five to fifteen couplets called sher. Here is the beautiful strangeness: the couplets do not have to connect. Each sher is a complete poem, able to stand alone, yet all are threaded on the same refrain and rhyme. Reading a ghazal is like walking through a gallery where every painting is different but the light is the same in every room.
Radif, qaafiya, matla, maqta
Four words unlock the form. The radif is the refrain, a word or phrase repeated exactly at the end of both lines of the first couplet and at the end of the second line of every couplet after. The qaafiya is the rhyme that comes immediately before the radif each time. So if your radif is “tonight” and your qaafiya sound is “-air,” your lines will end in “square tonight,” “air tonight,” “chair tonight,” “prayer tonight.”
The matla is the opening couplet, where both lines carry the qaafiya and radif, teaching the reader the music of the poem. The maqta is the closing couplet, where the poet traditionally signs the poem by weaving in their own name or pen name, the takhallus, often speaking to themselves in the third person. Ghalib turned this signature into an art of self-address: tender, ironic, devastating.
Classical ghazals also keep both lines of a couplet at the same length or meter, called beher. In English this is often loosened to lines of roughly equal breath. What cannot be loosened is the radif: lose the refrain and the necklace scatters.
Build one, step by step
Choose the radif first, because it is the engine of the whole poem. Pick a word or short phrase that can bear repetition and keep changing meaning: “tonight,” “without you,” “in this city,” “again.” Then list fifteen or twenty qaafiya words that rhyme and can sit naturally before it. This list is your treasury; the richer it is, the freer you will be.
Write the matla to establish the music, then draft each remaining sher as its own two-line poem. Do not try to tell one continuous story; that is the habit of other forms. Instead, let each couplet approach the poem’s mood from a new direction: one sher about a street, one about God, one about a joke that hurt. The unity of a ghazal is emotional weather, not narrative.
Finish with a maqta that turns the poem toward yourself. Address yourself by name or pen name, gently or ruthlessly. This signature is not vanity; it is the moment the mask comes off, and it often carries the poem’s deepest cut.
Common pitfalls
The most common failure in English ghazals is forcing the couplets into a single connected narrative, which makes the refrain feel like a nervous tic instead of a bell. Trust disjunction. If two neighboring couplets feel too related, separate them or cut one.
The second pitfall is a weak radif: a refrain so specific it can only mean one thing, so every repetition lands identically. Test your radif by asking whether it can sound hopeful in one couplet, bitter in another, holy in a third. The third pitfall is dropping the qaafiya and keeping only the refrain; without the changing rhyme before the fixed word, the music loses its turn, the small surprise before the familiar chime.
A fourth stumble deserves its own warning, because nearly every first ghazal makes it: varying the radif for elegance, writing “again” in one couplet, “once more” in the next, “anew” in a third. The variation feels writerly, but it quietly dismantles the engine. The radif is the fixed star; the qaafiya is where the change lives. If the repetition starts to bore you, the problem is never the refrain, it is a couplet that has failed to shift the refrain’s meaning. Fix the sher, and keep the word.
Try It: your first ghazal
Step one: choose the radif “again” and hunt a qaafiya sound to sit before it. Try “-old” and build the treasury out loud: sold, gold, old, cold, told, bold, rolled, controlled, consoled. Nine words is a workable purse; each will buy you one couplet ending in “sold again,” “gold again,” “told again” and so on. If a radif you love yields only four rhymes, thank it and choose another; the treasury decides the poem’s freedom before a single line exists.
Step two: write the matla so both lines teach the music. For instance: “The year turns, and the marigolds are sold again; / the same grey street is bought by autumn’s gold again.” Read it twice and hear what the reader now knows without being told: every couplet from here on will close on that “-old” chime and the word “again.” The contract is signed in two lines.
Step three: write one sher that has nothing to do with marigolds, then sign off. Try: “You ask me why I keep his broken watch: / some things are only whole when they are old again.” A new subject, the same music, a complete poem in two lines. Then the maqta, turning to yourself by name: “Aman, stop knocking at that painted door; / the house forgot you when it grew cold again.” Swap in your own name or pen name, and let the signature carry the sharpest cut in the poem.
Make it your own
You inherit the ghazal from Persian and Urdu masters, but the form has crossed happily into English, Hindi, Bengali, Spanish and beyond, carrying its couplets like luggage that fits every airline. Write ghazals about hostel corridors, night shifts, WhatsApp silences. The form asks only for longing and discipline, and every generation has plenty of both.
A ghazal is also a natural fit for a multilingual contest. Writory’s monthly contest welcomes any language and any form, and scores each poem on creativity, emotion, structure, language and theme; a ghazal, with its strict refrain and its ocean of feeling, gives you a strong hand in all five suits. If you write in Urdu or Hindi, do not translate the soul out of it; send it as it is.
A matla and a second sher (radif: “tonight”)
The moon is pouring silver on the square tonight;
even the beggar wears a crown of air tonight.
You asked me once what grief is made of, friend:
it is a room, a lamp, an empty chair tonight.
Both lines of the matla end in qaafiya plus radif (square tonight, air tonight); the second sher repeats them only in its second line, and stands alone as a complete poem.
A maqta with a takhallus
Call every wound a window, every scar a door:
Noor, even the river says your prayer tonight.
The closing couplet signs the poem with the pen name Noor, turning the ghazal’s longing back on the poet in the classical manner of Ghalib’s self-address.
Exercises
- Choose a radif of one or two words and list twenty qaafiya rhymes for it before writing a single line.
- Write five couplets on five unrelated subjects, all ending in your qaafiya and radif, and resist any urge to connect them.
- Write a maqta addressing yourself by name, first tenderly, then rewrite it with irony. Keep the sharper one.
- Take a ghazal you love in any language and map its skeleton: mark the radif, the qaafiya, the matla and the maqta.
Key takeaways
- A ghazal is five to fifteen couplets, each complete in itself.
- The radif is the fixed refrain; the qaafiya is the changing rhyme just before it.
- The matla opens with the music twice; the maqta closes with your signature.
- Unity comes from mood and refrain, never from plot.
- Choose a radif flexible enough to change meaning with every return.
Related lessons
Part of Forms of Poetry in the free Writory Academy: about 12 minutes, Advanced level, with a quiz that counts toward a signed certificate on the Certificate Track. By the Writory editorial team. Updated July 2026.