Poets Directory (شعرائے کرام)

Chandu Lal Bahadur Shadan (birth year disputed, 1761–62 / 1763 / 1766 – 15 April 1845) was a Maharaja, statesman and poet of Hyderabad. Born in Hyderabad to a Khatri family from Rai Bareilly, he rose from a clerk of the vegetable market to become Prime Minister of Hyderabad State, serving from after Munir-ul-Mulk's death in 1832–33 until his resignation in 1844. He received the title of Maharaja from Sikandar Jah in 1819–20 and was famed for a generosity that drew poets and men of letters to his court — he even invited Zauq from Delhi, who declined. He studied Persian poetry with Qatil and Hafiz and Urdu poetry with Shah Nasir, and wrote extensively in Persian — a Kulliyat, a 4,025-couplet masnavi, three divans of ghazals — alongside Urdu verse, of which one divan has been published. He died at Hyderabad on 15 April 1845.

Chhannu Lal Dilgeer (c. 1780 – 1848) was Lucknow's great marsiya poet — the man who gave up ghazal for Karbala. Born in Lucknow, the brother of Raja Jhau Lal, deputy prime minister under Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula, he first studied under Mirza Khani Nawazish and later under Nasikh, and was praised by Mushafi. He began as a ghazal poet under the takhallus Tarab, but, captivated by Karbala, he abandoned ghazal entirely — famously throwing his ghazal diwan into Moti Jheel, Lucknow — and devoted himself to marsiya and salam. He converted to Islam and took the name Ghulam Hussain. A speech impairment kept him from reciting his own marsiyas, but he innovated in composition, was popular under Ghazi-ud-Din Haider, and received Rs. 400 from Nawab Mohammad Ali Shah for a masnavi in praise of Hussainabad. He is credited with 417 marsiyas; his Majmua Marasi Mirza Dilgeer (Nawal Kishore Press) is preserved in the Tagore Library of Lucknow University. His most famous marsiya, Ghabraye Gi Zainab, on Zainab's arrival after Karbala, is still recited worldwide in majlis and Sham-e-Ghareeba. He died in 1848 and lies in Lucknow's "tilted grave".