Ameer Khusro

Ameer Khusro (1253–1325), born Abul Hasan Yaminuddin Khusro in Patiyali (Etah, U.P.), is the first poet of Rekhta/Hindavi — the founding voice of Urdu — and an icon of the Delhi Sultanate. The son of a Turkic Central-Asian father and an Indian mother, he became a devoted disciple of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya and served as court poet under the sultans of Delhi. His primary works are in Persian — the Khamsa, the masnavis Hasht Bihisht and Nuh Sipihir, and the prose chronicle Khazain-ul-Futuh — but it is his Hindavi verse that made him immortal: the playful pahelis (riddles) woven into Indian folklore, and the qawwali kalams still sung seven centuries on. His ghazal "Ze-hal-e-miskin" — Persian and Hindavi alternating line by line — is regarded as the first ghazal ever written in Rekhta. Honoured as Tuti-e-Hind (Parrot of India) and called the father of qawwali, he fused Persian and Indian music, created the khayal and tarana forms, and is traditionally credited with the invention of the tabla and sitar. He died in Delhi in October 1325, months after his master, and lies buried beside Nizamuddin's grave.