Aasi Ghazipuri

Aasi Ghazipuri (1834–1917) was a Sufi mystic poet of Ghazipur, of the Nasikh school — he is regarded as "the most respectable after Meer Dard to have written this kind of poetry." Born Shah Muhammad Abdul Aleem on 21 December 1834 at Sikandarpur in Ballia district, into a well-educated family tracing its lineage to Hazrat Umar Farooq, he took the pen-name Aasi and spent his entire life in Ghazipur, publishing his divan under the title Ain-ul-Maarif. He sought counsel in poetry from Afzal Allahabadi, a disciple of Nasikh, and became the teacher of Fani Ghazipuri; Firaq Gorakhpuri and Majnun Gorakhpuri praised him. His ghazal is essentially mystical: the heart's wealth is won only by losing it, love asks to be parted from both worlds, and the believer asks God for nothing but to go on wanting Him. He died at Ghazipur in 1917 and was buried in Mohalla Nooruddinpura. Eighteen of his ghazals and eighteen of his sher survive.