ردیف

The word radīf (ردیف) derives from the Arabic root r-d-f, which means 'to follow behind,' 'to ride pillion,' or 'to come after.' A rādif was a person who rode behind a horseman on the same mount. In Persian prosody, the radīf is what 'follows behind' the rhyme word (qāfiya) at the end of each couplet of a ghazal. It is not itself the rhyme — it is what comes after the rhyme, repeated identically at the end of both lines of the opening couplet (matla) and then at the end of every second line throughout the poem. The radif can be a single word, a phrase, or even a short clause.

The radīf is peculiar to Persian and Urdu prosody — it does not exist as a formal category in Arabic poetry, and there is nothing quite equivalent in European traditions. The closest Western analogy might be the refrain of a villanelle or the burden of a ballad, but neither works quite the same way. In the ghazal, the radif returns not as a chorus but as a grammatical conclusion to each independently meaningful couplet — so the same word or phrase is made to follow from a different preceding thought each time, accumulating new meaning with each repetition.

The choice of radif was one of the central artistic decisions a Persian poet made. A skilled poet would choose a radif that was itself interesting — philosophically resonant, grammatically flexible, emotionally charged — so that each couplet's approach to the same conclusion would feel both fresh and inevitable. Hafez's ghazals with radifs like 'kujāst' (where is it?), 'mī-dānam' (I know), or 'nist' (there is not) demonstrate how a single phrase becomes a lens through which dozens of different images are refracted. The poem circles; the radif is the center it circles around.

The concept of radif entered English-language poetry criticism in the 20th century as scholars began studying Persian prosody systematically. When American poets began writing ghazals in English — Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Agha Shahid Ali — the question of whether to include a radif became a marker of formal commitment. Ali insisted it was essential. Others wrote without it. The debate turned on whether the radif's repetition was a feature of Persian grammar that English couldn't sustain, or a universal formal principle that any language could adopt. Both positions produced interesting poems.