Marsia

Encyclopedia : M : MA : MAR : Marsia

Marsiya or Marsia (Persian: مرثیہ) is an elegiac poem written to commemorate the martyrdom and valour of Hazrat Imam Hussain and his comrades of the Karbala. In its form the marsia generally consists of six-line units, with a rhyming quatrain, and a couplet on a different rhyme. This form found a specially congenial soil in Lucknow (a city in Northern India), chiefly because it was the centre of Shia Muslim community, which regarded it an act of piety and religious duty to eulogise and bemoan the martyrs of the battle of Karbala. The form reached its peak in the writing of Mir Babar Ali Anis. Marsia is a poem written to commemorate the martyrdom of Ahl al-Bayt, Imam Hussain and Battle of Karbala. It is usually a poem of mourning. The famous marsia writers in Urdu are Mir Baber Ali Anis, Salamatali Dabir, Syed Muhammad Meerza Uns and Syed Mohammad Meerza Mohazzab. Even a short poem written to mourn the death of a friend can be called marsia. Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem 'In Memoriam' can rightly be called marsia. The sub-parts of marsia are called noha and soz which means lamentation and burning of (heart) respectively.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.