Bahr (poetry)

A baḥr (from Arabic بحر, lit. 'sea'; ; bəhr; bahir; بحر; 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.

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 tumako 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 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 bahr of Ghazal or a 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