The old ghazal, i.e. the poetry of eros in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, has been read as great literature but seldom as a document of history. This book argues that there is one element – the expression of masculine passion (ishq) for a masculine object – that has shaped the ghazal historically and across languages. The neglect of this element, which it terms lyric queerness, in mainstream cultural history and even LGBTQ studies, screens from us a lyrical corpus that was historically aware, vernacularizing, and suspicious of other-worldly interpretations and is represented here by the ghazal of the Indian subcontinent.