Arabic · noun · Love & Longing

Wafa

वफ़ा
said wa-FAA
also written: Vafa, wafaa, vafa, wafa-e
Meaning

Faithfulness, fidelity, keeping of the vow of love.

Literally: faithfulness, fidelity, keeping faith

How Iqbal uses it

Wafa is faithfulness — the lover's steadfast constancy, the keeping of love's covenant even when it is met with cruelty or neglect. It is the moral spine of the aashiq: to stay true is the whole vocation, and the ghazal often laments that wafa lives only in the lover while the beloved practices its opposite. In Iqbal's hands wafa rises into a virtue of the self — fidelity to one's love, one's word, and one's ideal as the test of a worthy soul.