Gazel, Or Ghazel, a kind of lyric poem, consisting of from 5 to 17 stanzas of two lines each, all the second lines of which rhyme together. It is a favorite form in the poetry of the Turks and the Persians, and may be called the sonnet of the East. The last couplet always contains the real or assumed name of the author. The subjects treated in the gazel are either erotic and bacchanalian, or allegorical and mystical. Ha-fiz excels in this form of the lyric, and imitations of it have been made in German by Platen, Ruckert, and others.