Arabic · noun · Love & Longing

Visaal

विसाल
said vi-SAAL
also written: Vasl, wisal, wisaal, visal, Wisaal
Meaning

Union with the beloved; the longed-for meeting that ends separation.

Literally: union, meeting

Usage & notes

Visaal is union with the beloved — the longed-for end of separation, the arrival the whole poem leans toward. In the Sufi register it is union with the Divine, often imagined as fatal to the separate self, so poets prize the ache of seeking nearly as much as the meeting itself. Iqbal is wary of an easy dissolution: he often values the tension of seeking — the self kept distinct and striving — over a union that would erase the questing 'I'.