Word.ws English Dictionary

qawwali

UK/kəˈwɑːli/

qawwali noun: a style of Muslim devotional music, especially among the South Asian Sufis, accompanied by drums and harmonium.

Noun

qawwali (countable and uncountable, plural qawwalis)

  1. (uncountable) A style of Muslim devotional music, especially among the South Asian Sufis, accompanied by drums and harmonium.
    • Jameela Siddiqi listens to qawwali and talks to its performers […].1994, Simon Broughton, World Music: The Rough Guide
  2. (countable) A song in this style.
    • They are singing not a religious qawwali but its secular and lay cousin.1997, Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold, HarperCollins, published 2013, page 223
    • Every Thursday, in the dargah's enclosure, musicians in shimmering turquoise kurtas, their fingers bejewelled with bling, perform qawwalis attributed to Khusrau […].2016, Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations, Penguin, published 2017, page 86

qawwali meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati

qawwali in Urdu

qawwali, kind of Indian sufi devotional song
قوالی qavvālī

qawwali in Bengali

qawwali
কাওয়ালী kaōẇali

qawwali in Punjabi

qawwali
ਕ਼ੱਵਾਲੀ qavvālī

qawwali in Gujarati

qawwali
કવ્વાલી kavvālī

Forms of qawwali

pluralqawwalis

Origin of qawwali

From Urdu قوالی (qawwālī), from Classical Persian قوالی (qawwālī).

Words formed from qawwali

Questions about qawwali

What does qawwali mean?
Qawwali means a style of Muslim devotional music, especially among the South Asian Sufis, accompanied by drums and harmonium.
What is qawwali in Urdu?
Qawwali in Urdu is قوالی (qavvālī). See Qawwali meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is qawwali?
Qawwali is a noun.
How do you pronounce qawwali?
Qawwali is pronounced /kəˈwɑːli/ (UK).
What is the plural of qawwali?
The plural of qawwali is qawwalis.

Words near qawwali in the dictionary

  1. qawali
  2. qawalis
  3. qawals
  4. Qawasqar
  5. qawwal
  6. qawwali
  7. qawwali-like
  8. qawwalis
  9. qawwals
  10. qaygiq
  11. qaygiqs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: qawwali (page history and authors); قوالی (Urdu) (page history and authors); কাওয়ালী (Bengali) (page history and authors); ਕ਼ੱਵਾਲੀ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); કવ્વાલી (Gujarati) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sumxr-qawwali.wav.

Cite this entry: “qawwali.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/qawwali. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.