What Is a Marsiya? The Urdu Elegy of Karbala

The classical marsiya is written in musaddas, six-line stanzas in which the first four lines rhyme together and the last two form a rhyming couplet. A single marsiya can run to a hundred or two hundred stanzas.

Its parts follow the story of a hero's last day: the chehra (opening, often a description of dawn or the desert), the sarapa (portrait of the hero), the rukhsat (leave-taking from family), the aamad (arrival on the battlefield), the rajaz (the hero's proclamation of his lineage), the jang (battle), the shahadat (martyrdom) and the bain (lament).

The form reached its height in Lucknow with two rivals, Mir Anees and Mirza Dabir, both born in 1803. Lucknow argued for generations over which was greater; in 1907 Shibli Nomani's Muwazana-e-Anees-o-Dabir (A Comparison of Anees and Dabir) gave the palm to Anees for his naturalness and his mastery of the spoken idiom. Before them, poets such as Mir Zamir had established the six-line form.

A marsiya is performed, not only read: at the majlis, the mourning assembly, a reciter delivers it from a pulpit with voice and gesture, or sings it in the style called soz-khwani. The audience responds with tears and cries of grief. The short verse salutation called salam and the nauha, a lament chanted with breast-beating, belong to the same tradition.

The word is also used for elegies on individuals: Ghalib wrote one of the most moving ghazals in the language on the death of his adopted son Arif, Hali wrote a marsiya for Ghalib, and Iqbal a long elegy on his mother.