mpt · CSS study notes
Poetry & Literary Terms
Poetic forms (اصنافِ سخن)
| Term (Urdu) | Transliteration | Definition | Past-paper context |
|---|---|---|---|
| دیوان (جمع: دواوین) | Devan (plural: Dawaween) | a poet's collected works/anthology, traditionally arranged alphabetically by rhyme letter | Asked identically in 2025 Q9 and 2026 Q7 — "دیوان کی جمع کیا ہے؟" → دواوین. This is the single highest-repeat question on the whole exam |
| مرثیہ | Marsia | an elegy, classically mourning the martyrs of Karbala | recurring poetry-term category (per study-priority notes) |
| رباعی | Rubai | a quatrain — a four-line poem with its own rhyme scheme | 2025 Q2: the phrase "لاحول ولا قوۃ الا باللہ" fits this poetic form → رباعی |
| مثنوی | Masnavi | a long narrative poem written in rhyming couplets | 2026 Q19: "مثنوی کس صنفِ ادب سے تعلق رکھتی ہے؟" → شاعری (poetry) |
Poets & literary figures
| Figure | Fact tested | Year |
|---|---|---|
| مرزا غالب (Mirza Ghalib) | Real name: اسد اللہ خان (Asadullah Khan). Predicted 2027 follow-up: his earlier pen name (تخلص), before he adopted "Ghalib," was اسد (Asad) | 2026 Q14 (confirmed); pen-name question predicted for 2027 |
| الطاف حسین حالی (Altaf Hussain Hali) | Author of مقدمہ شعر و شاعری (Muqaddima Sher-o-Shairi), the foundational critical work on Urdu poetry | 2026 Q13 |
| علامہ اقبال (Allama Iqbal) | The poem مسجدِ قرطبہ (Masjid-e-Qurtaba) appears in his collection بالِ جبریل (Bal-e-Jibril) | 2026 Q4 |
| آغا حسن امانت (Agha Hassan Amanat) | Credited as the writer of Urdu's first drama | 2024 |
| عبدالحلیم شرر (Abdul Halim Sharar) | Introduced free verse (آزاد نظم) into Urdu drama | 2024 |
| امتیاز علی تاج (Imtiaz Ali Taj) | Contemporary of میرزا ادیب (Mirza Adeeb) | 2024 |
Script
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نستعلیق (Nastaliq) — the calligraphic script/style in which Urdu is conventionally written. 2026 Q11: "اردو زبان کا رسم الخط کیا کہلاتا ہے؟" → نستعلیق
Cross-study notes
- Sanaye couplet-based questions are frequently drawn from the same poets and forms listed here (Rubai, Masnavi, Devan) — see Sanaye — Rhetorical/Literary Devices.
- The phrase "لاحول ولا قوۃ الا باللہ" used to identify Rubai above is itself a set religious phrase — treat it alongside other fixed-phrase items on Idiom & Proverb Translations (Urdu ↔ English).