found: New Grove dict. of mus. WWW site, Apr. 20, 2009:Ghazal [also: ghazel] (Poetic form widely used in West, Central and South Asia and in other Muslim cultures, particularly associated with Persian and Urdu, but applied in other languages; composed of several independent couplets with a unified rhyme scheme: aa, ba, ca, etc.) Under India/II. History of classical music/2. To the mid-16th century: (In the decades before and after 1300 [whether or not] the Indo-Persian poet Amir Khusrau ... introduced the singing of ghazal, he certainly established and legitimized them as South Asian musical items.) Under Islamic religious music/6. Prayers and devotional songs: (an elevated form of love song treating secular and/or divine love, is used throughout Muslim Asia)
