Meaning
Night.
Literally: night
Usage & notes
Raat is night in the Hindavi register — the dark hours of separation, waiting and trial, but also of vigil and secret prayer, twin to the Persian shab. It is the long darkness the lover and the seeker must pass through. Iqbal uses the night for the testing-dark that precedes the dawn of awakening: a people's long raat of slumber and bondage, endured and kept-alive in vigil, that ripens at last into morning.