For the Egyptian oasis with same name, see Kharga Oasis. For the Moroccan footballer, see Houssine Kharja. For other uses, see Kharjah.
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A kharja or kharjah (Arabic: خرجة, romanized: kharjah, lit. 'final' [ˈxardʒa]; Spanish: jarcha [ˈxaɾtʃa]; Portuguese: carja [ˈkaɾʒɐ]; also known as markaz),[1] is the final refrain of a muwashshah (مُوَشَّح 'girdle'), a lyric genre of al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim control) written in Arabic or Andalusi Romance ("Mozárabic").
The muwashshah consists of five stanzas (bait) of four to six lines, alternating with five or six refrains (qufl); each refrain has the same rhyme and metre, whereas each stanza has only the same metre. The kharja appears often to have been composed independently of the muwashshah in which it is found.