Navoiy’s qit‘as and the theory of ghazal and qit‘a

The ghazal is the most widespread lyric genre in the literatures of the Muslim East. It first appeared in Arabic poetry in the 6th–7th centuries and took full shape in the 13th–14th centuries. Ghazals are most often about love, but there are also hamd, na‘t, rindona, orifona and nature ghazals. Its size can run from 3 to 27 couplets; Navoiy often wrote 7- and 9-couplet ghazals. A ghazal is composed in one metre and has one rhyme system (aa, ba, da...). By how the couplets connect, the ghazal divides into four kinds: parokanda (couplets independent, unnoticed if their places are swapped), yakpora (couplets logically sequential), voqeaband (an event decides the order) and musalsal (couplets require each other). Navoiy criticised the parokanda ghazal, while “Jong‘a chun dermen” is a model of the musalsal. The first couplet is the matla‘ and the last the maqta‘; the maqta‘ often holds the pen name, but this is not obligatory. A couplet before the maqta‘ that is a lyrical digression is called a “stray couplet”, though “stray” is meant relatively. The qit‘a differs from the ghazal: it has no matla‘, its couplets rhyme ab, db, eb...; it has at least two couplets; its theme is free; a pen name is rarely used; and in Navoiy each qit‘a has a prose heading. “Qit‘a” is Arabic for “part, fragment”. In the four divans of “Xazoyin ul-maoniy” there are 210 qit‘as in all (50, 50, 60 and 50).