Beher (poetry)

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

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

Beher or Bahr (Arabic/Persian/Urdu: بحر) in Urdu poetry is the meter of a sher (couplet). Essentially, beher is a specific pattern, combining the arkaan of Urdu prosody that define the "length" of a sher. However, generally beher is categorized in three classes: Short, medium, long, depending upon the length of the sher of the ghazal.

For a ghazal, since all the shers in it should be of the same beher, determining the beher of one sher (or even one line of the sher) is enough to determine the beher 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 beher called: khafiif musaddas makhbuun mahzuuf maqtu (Meter G8). This is a ten-syllable beher and by the standards of Urdu poetry, is a chotii (small) beher.

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 are consistent with any of the known meters. For example, the word "Jaanisaar" can be broken down into four syllables "Jaa", "ni", "saa" and "r". The weight of "Jaa = 2", "ni = 1", "saa = 2" and "r = 1" and weight of the word "Jaanisaar" is 2121. Rekhta (website) has developed free online tool "Rekhta Taqti" for poets to calculate and check Beher of Ghazal or a sher.

Types of Beher

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

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