Shah Hatim

The soldier-poet who gave Delhi its first Urdu impulse — and purified its diction a century before the Lucknow reformers. Shah Hatim (1699–c. 1783), born Shaikh Zahuruddin in Delhi, was a soldier who became one of the founding voices of Urdu poetry in Delhi. When Wali Dakhni's diwan reached the capital around 1720, Hatim and his friends Naji, Mazmun and Abru took up Rekhta poetry — Delhi's answer to the Deccan. By profession a sepoy (he served as an inspector under Nawab Amdat-ul-Mulk of Allahabad and in the households of several nobles), he spent his last days in seclusion near the Delhi Fort. His lasting act was editorial: mid-century he discarded his early diwan and recompiled his work in a purified, standardised Rekhta idiom, naming it *Divan Zadeh* ("Descendant of the Diwan") — the first conscious program of Urdu poetic reform, a century before Nasikh and Aatish are credited with it. Deeply influenced by Khan Arzu (though not formally his disciple), he was proudest of his own pupil: Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda. His *Divan Zadeh* holds ghazals, mukhammas, rubais, a saqi-nama, two masnavis in praise of tobacco and qehwa, and a shehr-ashob on Muhammad Shah's Delhi.