Imam Bakhsh Nasikh

Imam Bakhsh Nasikh (birth year disputed — d. 16 August 1838, Lucknow), known as Sheikh Imam Bakhsh Nasikh, was born in Faizabad and made Lucknow his home, becoming the founder of the Lucknow school of Urdu poetry. He is celebrated less as a poet of deep feeling than as the supreme craftsman of the art: he deliberated upon language, syntax, and poetic device with unmatched technical virtuosity, expanding Urdu's vocabulary and refining its idiom while respecting classical norms. His legendary rivalry with Khwaja Haidar Ali Aatish — Nasikh the polished craftsman against Aatish the soulful natural — shaped the literary life of Lucknow in the 1830s. Forced into exile by court politics, he returned to Lucknow after the death of minister Hakim Mehdi in 1837 and died there in 1838. His diwans, later printed together as the *Kulliyat-e-Nasikh*, remain monuments of the Lucknow style.