Ahmad Faraz
Quick answer: Ahmad Faraz craft guide: the Urdu ghazal's modern romantic, master of the proud lover's voice and poems of dissent. Techniques and starting points.
For the last half of the twentieth century, if young lovers across Pakistan and India quoted one living ghazal poet, it was usually Ahmad Faraz. Born Syed Ahmad Shah in 1931 in Kohat, in the Pashtun northwest, he wrote in Urdu with such melodic clarity that singers queued for his verses; Mehdi Hassan's rendition of his ghazal beginning 'Ranjish hi sahi' remains one of the most loved recordings in the tradition.
But Faraz was two poets in one skin: the romantic of the mushaira circuit and the dissident who wrote against military rule, faced exile, and read protest poems to packed halls. The combination is his lesson.
The last classical romantic
Faraz taught, worked in radio, and rose to fame through the mushaira, the live gathering where Urdu poetry lives or dies by the audience's ear. His collections, from Tanha Tanha and Dard-e-Ashob onward, sold in numbers poetry publishers elsewhere only dream about, and his couplets migrated into everyday speech, letters and, later, the internet, the ghazal's oldest trick of anonymous universality still working.
Under General Zia's dictatorship his poems of dissent, including a famous piece addressing professional soldiers about the sieges they enforce, brought interrogation and years of self-exile in Europe and the Gulf. He returned, accepted and later returned state honours as his conscience dictated, and died in 2008. Both careers, lover and dissident, used the same instrument: the couplet that completes itself in the listener's mouth.
The signature moves
Faraz worked the ghazal's two-line unit with a small set of powerful settings.
What you can learn
Practise the two-line unit regardless of what forms you usually write. Compose ten standalone couplets where the first line makes a promise and the second line keeps it in an unexpected way. This trains the most transferable skill in poetry, the managed reversal, and you will feel it improve your stanza endings everywhere.
Study his dignity management. Write a poem of longing in which the speaker asks for something and simultaneously makes clear they will survive refusal. Neediness flattens poems; Faraz's lovers want intensely and stand straight, and readers return for that posture. Finally, let one vocabulary serve two loyalties: draft a poem that reads as addressed to a person and, on second reading, to a country or cause you have quarrelled with.
Where to start reading
Hear him first: recordings of 'Ranjish hi sahi' by Mehdi Hassan, and of Faraz reading at mushairas, show why sound carried his fame. Then read Tanha Tanha and Dard-e-Ashob in Urdu or Devanagari editions, and the protest poem addressed to soldiers of a besieging army, widely anthologised as 'Muhasara', the siege. English translations of selected ghazals exist and are serviceable, though the couplets' click is best felt in the original.
What poets can take from this
- Write ten standalone couplets where line two keeps line one's promise in an unexpected way.
- Give every poem of longing a spine: the speaker must be able to survive refusal.
- Draft one poem legible as both love poem and quarrel with your country.
- Test couplets by quoting them out of context; the strong ones need no scaffolding.
- Perform your work aloud somewhere regularly; the listening ear is the ghazal's true editor.
Try it yourself
Write a poem inviting someone back who hurt you, on your own stated terms. Each stanza must contain one concession and one condition, and the final stanza must show the speaker prepared to be refused.
Questions
What is Ahmad Faraz's most famous ghazal?
The ghazal opening 'Ranjish hi sahi', in which the speaker invites the beloved to return even if only to cause pain again, is his best known, especially in Mehdi Hassan's celebrated rendition.
Was Ahmad Faraz a political poet?
Alongside his romantic ghazals he wrote pointed dissent against military rule in Pakistan, which led to interrogation and years of self-exile during the Zia era. His protest poems remain widely recited.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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