Meter, qafia, radif — these are the rules. Following them makes a verse technically correct. What makes a ghazal great is something else: the use of a shared vocabulary of images and rhetorical devices, inherited over a thousand years, that every reader of the tradition recognizes. Below, each of the six classical devices, shown with one couplet that puts it to work.
Tashbihتشبیہ— Simile
A direct comparison of two unlike things using an explicit comparison particle — “like”, “as”, or the Urdu سی (“of the kind of”).
نازکی اس کے لب کی کیا کہیےپنکھڑی اک گلاب کی سی ہےMir says the beloved's lips are like a rose petal. The phrase کی سی ہے (“is of the kind of”) is the explicit comparison particle — and that's what makes it tashbih, not the comparison itself but the open declaration of it.
Istiaraاستعارہ— Metaphor
Metaphor pushed harder. Calling a thing by the name of what it resembles, with no “like” or “as” to soften the leap — the two things become one in speech.
بازیچۂ اطفال ہے دنیا مرے آگےہوتا ہے شب و روز تماشا مرے آگےGhalib does not say the world is likea children's playground — he says it is one (بازیچۂ اطفال). The comparison particle is dropped; the two terms collapse into one.
Talmihتلمیح— Allusion
A brief reference to a story, person, or legend the reader is expected to recognize — Quranic figures, Persian legends, historical mystics. The poet says little; the inherited story does the heavy lifting.
غضب کیا، تیرے وعدے پہ اعتبار کیاتمام شب قیامت کا انتظار کیاThe word qiyāmat (قیامت) is the allusion — the Day of Judgement in Islamic eschatology. Daagh isn't literally waiting for the apocalypse; he's saying he waited all night the way one might wait for the Last Day.
Kinayaکنایہ— Implication
Saying one thing while meaning another, by oblique implication. The courtly device of meaning more than one says.
بس کہ دشوار ہے ہر کام کا آساں ہوناآدمی کو بھی میسر نہیں انساں ہوناGhalib uses two near-synonyms — ādmī (آدمی, biological man) and insān (انساں, the spiritually realised human). The kinaya is in the gap between them: even being merely human, the poet implies, is too high a station for most.
Ihamایہام— Double meaning
A word or phrase chosen because it can be read two ways, both of which work — the surface meaning and a second meaning the alert reader catches underneath.
غالبؔ چھٹی شراب پر اب بھی کبھی کبھیپیتا ہوں روزِ ابر و شبِ ماہتاب میںOn the surface: I've given up wine, but I still drink occasionally — on cloudy days and moonlit nights. The iham works on every key word: sharāb is literal wine and Sufi intoxication; roz-e-abr is a cloudy day and a day of sorrow; shab-e-māhtāb is a moonlit night and a night of longing.
Alamatعلامت— Symbol
A conventional image whose meaning is fixed by a thousand years of usage: the bulbul (nightingale, the lover singing hopelessly), the gul (rose, the indifferent beloved), the shamʿa(candle, burning itself for another's light), the parwana (moth, fatally drawn to that flame), the saqi (wine-bearer), hijr (separation), vasl (union).
غمِ ہستی کا اسدؔ کس سے ہو، جز مرگ علاجشمع ہر رنگ میں جلتی ہے سحر ہونے تکTwo symbols at once. The shamʿa (candle) is the alamat for the self — burning quietly through the long night. Sahar (dawn) doubles as alamat for death — the moment the burning ends. Every Urdu reader supplies the inherited meanings without being told.
And finally, the deepest test of a sheʿr: does it have rabt? Great poets write sheʿrs where you cannot remove one misra without destroying the other. That fusion is the thing.
دل ہی تو ہے نہ سنگ و خشت درد سے بھر نہ آئے کیوںروئیں گے ہم ہزار بار کوئی ہمیں ستائے کیوں