Poets Directory (شعرائے کرام)

Abid Ali Abid (1906–1971) was a Pakistani Urdu and Persian poet, critic and educator — a critic first and a poet second, by his own field's judgement. Born on 17 September 1906 at Dera Ismail Khan, he graduated in law and joined the bar, but his literary inclination brought him to Lahore, where he took an M.A. in Persian and taught Persian at Dayal Singh College. He wrote books of literary criticism in Urdu and Persian — Usool-e-Inteqaad, Adab Ke Asloob, Al-Bayan and Al-Badi among them — and edited literary journals including Sahifa-Lahore. He was among the first drama and feature writers at Radio Pakistan Lahore in the late 1940s and 1950s, and had worked on the story and dialogue of Heer Ranjha (1931), the first Punjabi talking film. His poetry collection Main Kabhi Ghazal Na Kehta and his fiction Talismaat and Shahbaz Khan stand beside the criticism, but it was the criticism that earned him his place of distinction. His daughter Shabnam Shakeel became a noted poet in her own right. He survived three heart attacks and succumbed to the fourth, dying in Lahore on 20 January 1971, aged 64.

"The First Lady of Urdu Poetry" — the first prominent woman poet of the progressive era. Ada Jafri (1924–2015), born Aziz Jahan in Badayun, was the first prominent woman poet of the progressive era — honoured as "The First Lady of Urdu Poetry". Her father died when she was three; raised in a traditional household, she began composing verse at twelve under the name Ada Badayuni, and received guidance from poets including Akhtar Sheerani, who printed her first ghazal in his journal *Rooman*. She married the civil servant and littérateur Nurul Hasan Jafri in Lucknow in January 1947, taking the name Ada Jafarey, and moved with him to Karachi after Partition. Her first collection, *Main Saz Dhoondhti Rahi* (1950), announced a woman's voice writing the ghazal in the romanticist tradition with remarkable confidence; *Shahr-i Dard* (1967) won the Adamjee Literary Award. Later collections, an autobiography (*Jo Rahi So Bekhabari Rahi*), Urdu haiku, and her edited anthology *Ghazal Numa* followed. Pakistan honoured her with the Medal of Excellence (1981), the Pride of Performance (2003), and the Kamal-e-Fun lifetime award (2003) — the first woman to receive it. She died in Karachi on 12 March 2015.

Adil Mansuri (1936–2008) was an Indian modernist poet, calligrapher, painter and playwright, born in Ahmedabad on 18 May 1936 as Farid Mohammad. He spoke Gujarati at home and was educated in Arabic and Urdu; after Partition his family moved to Karachi, where he began writing Urdu ghazals and learning calligraphy, returning to Ahmedabad in 1955. He became a leading modernist who experimented with form and language together, writing ghazals in Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu, and is credited with developing the modern Gujarati ghazal. His Urdu collection *Hashr ki Subh Darakhshan Ho* carries his socio-political consciousness alongside Islamic tradition. He immigrated to New Jersey, USA, in 1985, where he continued to write, paint and practise calligraphy until his death on 6 November 2008. He received the Kalapi Award (1998) and the Vali Gujarati Award (2008).

Agha Shahid Ali was a Kashmiri-American poet who wrote in English and carried the ghazal into American poetry. Born in New Delhi in 1949 and raised in Kashmir, he studied at the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi, then earned a PhD at Pennsylvania State University and an MFA at the University of Arizona, teaching at universities including Hamilton, Princeton and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His collections include The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office and Rooms Are Never Finished, a National Book Award finalist, and he translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz and edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. His poems return again and again to Kashmir, exile, memory, loss and home. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 8 December 2001.

Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi (1916–2006), born Ahmad Shah Awan on 20 November 1916 at Anga in Khushab district, Punjab, was one of the central figures of modern Urdu literature — poet, short-story writer, critic, journalist and editor. From a family of Sufi pirs, he graduated from the University of the Punjab, Lahore, in 1935, briefly served in the excise department, and then gave his life to letters. He edited Phool, Tehzeeb-i-Niswaan, Adab-i-Lateef, Savera and Naqoosh, edited the daily Imroze, and from 1962 published his own journal Funoon for almost half a century — the nursery of a generation, Parveen Shakir among his mentees. As secretary-general of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Punjab (1948) and then Pakistan (1949), and from 1974 of the Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, Lahore, he was repeatedly arrested in the 1950s and 1970s for his convictions. His poetry moves between the traditional ghazal and the modern nazm, and his short stories — Chaupal, Bagooley, Sannata among them — are counted, by some critics, second only to Premchand in their depiction of rural life. He received the Pride of Performance (1968) and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1980), and died in Lahore on 10 July 2006.

Lisan-ul-Asr — the master of satire who laughed at a changing world.

Akhtar Sheerani (1905–1948), born Muhammad Dawood Khan at Tonk on 4 May 1905, was Lahore's poet of romance. His father, the scholar Hafiz Mahmood Khan Shirani, had the boy taught at home — religious learning, wrestling for the body, poetry for the soul — and when the family was driven from Tonk after a revolt against the Nawab, father and son settled in Lahore, where Dawood passed Munshi Fazil (1921) and Adeeb Fazil (1922) at Oriental College and took the pen name Akhtar under the guidance of Maulana Tajwar Najibabadi. From 1923 to 1939 he edited, in succession, Intikhab, Bahaaristan, Khyaalistan and Romaan, and wrote, at a time when the Progressive movement dominated Urdu letters, a poetry deliberately apart from it: not slogans but youth, beauty, nature and longing, in the spirit of Shelley and Keats — a verse that, in Pakistan Post's words, "exhales verse as a flower exhales fragrance". Woman, for him, was not one figure but beauty itself — beloved, wife, mother, sister — and nature took its colour from her. His life, by contrast, was a succession of losses — a son, a friend, a love called Salma who did not return his love — and drink undid his health. He died at Lahore on 9 September 1948, aged forty-three, two days before Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and lies in Miani Sahib Graveyard.

Pillar of the modern Urdu nazm — Sahitya Akademi laureate and the Filmfare-winning pen behind *Waqt*'s famous dialogues. Akhtar-ul-Iman (12 November 1915 – 9 March 1996), born at Qila Patthargarh near Najibabad in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor district, was one of the pillars of the modern Urdu nazm. Raised in harsh circumstances — an orphan's upbringing in Delhi — he worked menial jobs while studying, graduated from the Anglo-Arabic (Zakir Husain) College in Delhi, and took his master's in Urdu from Aligarh Muslim University. After a spell as a staff artist at All India Radio, he moved to Bombay in 1945 and became one of Hindi cinema's most respected screenwriters: his dialogues shaped landmark B.R. Films productions including *Kanoon* (1960), *Dharmputra* (1961) and *Waqt* (1965), earning him the Filmfare Best Dialogue award twice (1963, 1966); the famous "glass-house" line of *Waqt* is his. As a poet he deliberately set the ghazal aside, choosing the nazm — in free, conversational verse — to speak of the modern individual's alienation, moral choice and philosophical humanism. His collection *Yadein* won the 1962 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu. He died in Mumbai on 9 March 1996.

Ale Ahmad Suroor (1911–2002), born in Badaun, was one of the founders of modern Urdu criticism — a poet who became the conscience of Urdu literary judgement. His father, a postmaster, wanted him to be a doctor, so he first graduated in science from St John's College, Agra; but literature claimed him, and he took an M.A. in English in 1934. He taught English and Urdu at Aligarh and Lucknow, and from 1958 to 1974 was professor and Head of Urdu at Aligarh Muslim University, later founding and directing the Iqbal Institute at the University of Kashmir. His critical books — *Tanqeed Kya Hai?* (1947), *Adab aur Nazriya* (1954) and above all *Nazar aur Nazariya* (1973) — turned Urdu criticism from impressionistic praise into a disciplined, principled art; his lifelong study of Iqbal (*Iqbal: Nazriya aur Shairi*, 1978) remains a landmark. He wrote poetry too, in ghazal and nazm, with a critic's clarity and a poet's heart — the shore's peace weighed against the joy of fighting the storm. India honoured him with the Sahitya Akademi Award (1974) and the Padma Bhushan (1991). He died in Delhi on 9 February 2002.

Ali Sardar Jafri (1913–2000), born in Balrampur, Gonda district, U.P., was one of the most prominent Urdu poets of the twentieth century — a progressive poet, critic, and film lyricist. Raised in Lucknow's religious atmosphere, he could reportedly recite a thousand verses of Anis by age eight. Admitted to Aligarh Muslim University in 1933, he was expelled in 1936 for political reasons; he graduated from Zakir Husain College, Delhi (1938), and his Lucknow University postgraduate studies ended with his 1940–41 arrest for anti-war poems. He presided over the first conference of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Lucknow (1936), co-edited *Naya Adab* (1939–1949), and later edited *Guftagu*; his poetry collections — *Nai Duniya Ko Salaam* (1948), *Asia Jaag Utha* (1951), *Ek Khwab Aur*, *Mera Safar*, *Sarhad* — carry his romantic lyricism and revolutionary hope. He wrote film lyrics (*Dharti Ke Lal*, 1946; *Pardesi*, 1957), produced the documentary *Kabir, Iqbal and Freedom* and the 18-part TV serial *Kahkashan* on Urdu poets. He received the Padma Shri (1967), the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship (1971) and the Jnanpith Award (1997). He died in Mumbai on 1 August 2000.

Allama Shibli Nomani (1857–1914), born at Bindwal in Azamgarh district, was the scholar who gave Urdu its modern historiography. Taught first by the rationalist Maulana Muhammad Farooq Chirayakoti and then, on Hajj, by scholars in Arabia, he joined Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's Anglo-Mohammedan College, Aligarh, in 1882 as professor of Arabic and Persian, where sixteen years beside Thomas Arnold opened him to Western thought without loosening his oriental roots. After Sir Syed's death he advised Hyderabad State on education, then served as principal of Nadwatul Ulama (1908–1913), before returning to Azamgarh. His biographies — above all Al-Farooq — set a new standard: history written from sources, in lucid Urdu prose, rather than panegyric. As a critic, Sher-ul-Ajam made him a founder of Urdu literary criticism. He founded Shibli National College in 1883 and, in his last year, bequeathed his house and orchard for Darul Mussanifin (the House of Writers) at Azamgarh; its first formal meeting was held on 21 November 1914, three days after his death, and his disciple Syed Sulaiman Nadvi carried the house — and Sirat-un-Nabi — forward. His poetry, small in bulk beside his prose, carries the same mind: a reformer's grief for a community that had lost its learning, and a believer's address to eternity.

Ambar Bahraichi (1949–2021) was a prominent modern Urdu poet and a well-known Sanskrit scholar. Born Mohammad Idris at Bahraich on 5 July 1949, he made Lucknow his home and his literary base. He was a Sahitya Akademi award winner, and his bibliography joins the two traditions he lived in: Urdu collections such as Doob (1990), Khali Seepiyon Ka Iztirab (2000) and Malang Malhar (2013) stand beside Sanskrit and critical works including Maha Bhinishkarman (1987) and studies of Anand Vardhan. His ghazal is spare, image-driven and quietly philosophical — rivers and thirst, faces and masks, victories won outside the house and lost within it. A man who seems to have been a river himself, carrying the thirst of every stream he passed, he wrote of success as a face that changes colour, and of solitude as the silence of a forest of faces. He died at Lucknow on 7 May 2021, leaving a body of work that bridges Urdu poetry and Sanskrit learning.

Ameeq Hanafi (1928–1988) was one of the most prominent modern Urdu poets and a critic of wide range. Born Abdul Aziz Hanfi at Indore on 3 November 1928, he was educated at Mhow, matriculating in 1946 and taking two M.A. degrees, in Political Science in 1952 and in History in 1954. Alongside the social sciences he cultivated a deep interest in music and Indian philosophy. He joined All India Radio and retired from a senior position, remaining a broadcaster at heart. He began writing poetry at Mhow. His first collection, Sang-e-Pairahan (1958), still carried the imprint of Progressive poetics, but his later work — Shajar-e-Sada, Shab Gasht, and the long poem Salsalat-ul-Jaras — established him as a modernist of great promise and fulfilment. He also wrote criticism, including work on Amir Khusro and the study of poetry and poetics Sher Cheeze Deegar Ast, which ranges across Eastern and Western poetics. In both verse and criticism, he joined modern experiment to a classical sense of form.

Amjad Islam Amjad (4 August 1944 – 10 February 2023) was the poet Pakistan invited into its living rooms — through verse, and through television dramas that became household names. Born in Lahore to a family originally from Sialkot, he took an MA in Urdu literature from Punjab University (1967), lectured at Govt. M.A.O. College Lahore (1968–1975), directed at Pakistan Television Corporation (1975–1979), and later served as Director General of the Urdu Science Board (1989) and project director of the Children's Library Complex. Poet, playwright, lyricist, columnist, critic and translator, he authored more than seventy books. His first poetry book appeared in 1974; his collections include Barzakh (1974), Satvan Dar (1978), Fishar (1982), Barish ki Aawaz (1997) and Yahiin Kahiin (2006). His TV dramas — Waris (1979), Dehleez, Samandar, Raat, Waqt, Apnay Log — made him a household name, as did his famous ghazal "Insha Ji Utho", sung by Ghulam Ali, and the lyric "Mann Ki Lagan". His style is simple, humanistic and philosophical, emotionally direct — everyday feeling with depth. He received the Pride of Performance (1987), Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1998) and Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2023).

Arsh Malsiani (1908–1979) — born Balmukund on 20 September 1908 in Malsiyan, Punjab — was a distinguished Urdu poet, translator, prose writer and editor, known as the Raj Kavi of Punjab. His father, Labhu Ram "Josh" Malsiyani, was a celebrated Urdu-Persian scholar-poet and disciple of Dagh Dehlvi; that Dagh lineage is Arsh's literary inheritance. He began as an overseer in the Punjab Irrigation department, then taught for about fifteen years at the Government Industrial School, Ludhiana, earning his F.A. and B.A. along the way. From 1948 to 1968 he served in the Publications Division of the Government of India — Assistant Editor of the Urdu monthly Aajkal under Josh Malihabadi, and its editor from 1954. His poetry collections are Haft Rang, Chang-o-Aahang, Sharar-e-Sang and Aahang-e-Hijaz; he translated Umar Khayyam's rubais (Hast-o-Bood), gathered his humorous prose as Post-mortem, and published a biographical sketch of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1976). He died in Delhi on 15 December 1979.

Syed Anwar Hussain 'Arzoo' Lakhnavi (1873–1951) was a leading poet of the Lucknow school of Urdu poetry. Born in Lucknow into a cultured, well-off literary family, he was the son of Mir Zakir Hussain 'Yas' and the younger brother of Mir Yusuf Hussain 'Qayas', both poets. Educated at home and later in Arabic and Persian under Lucknow scholars, he wrote his first marsiya at twelve and became a disciple of Syed Zaman Ali 'Jalal' Lakhnavi, succeeding him as guide to Jalal's disciples. Though he wrote in nearly every genre — marsiya, qasida, masnavi, rubai, naat and more — he is remembered above all for his ghazals, collected in Fughan-e-Arzoo, Jahan-e-Arzoo and Nishan-e-Arzoo. His hallmark was plain, conversational language: he brought the ghazal closer to everyday speech without abandoning its Lucknow elegance. In 1942 he moved to Bombay and became one of the first mainstream Urdu poets to write for Hindi cinema, later migrating to Karachi, where he joined Radio Pakistan and died in 1951.

Asar Lakhnavi (1885–1967), born Mirza Jafar Ali Khan, was a prominent poet of the later Lucknow School, a critic, scholar and civil servant. Born on 12 July 1885 in Katra Abu Turab, Lucknow, he was educated at Canning College, served as Deputy Collector and held other important administrative posts, and later worked as a minister in the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, for which service India conferred on him the Padma Bhushan. A disciple of Aziz Lakhnavi, he wrote on traditional subjects with great linguistic finesse. His poetry collections include Baharaan, Naubaharaan and Uroos-e-Firtrat, his critical studies include Anis ki Marsiya Nigari, Mutala-e-Ghalib and Chhan Been, and his dictionary Farhang-e-Asar remains a landmark. He died in Lucknow on 6 June 1967.

Aziz Hamid Madni (1922–1991) was a Pakistani poet, critic and translator, and one of the stalwarts of the new Urdu ghazal in Pakistan. He was born on 15 June 1922 in Raipur, in British India, the son of Mohammad Hamid Saqi — a student of Shibli Nomani and a classmate of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar. In 1948 he moved to Pakistan and settled in Karachi. After a master's degree in English, he taught and worked in journalism for a short while, then joined Radio Pakistan as a programme executive. Three collections of his poetry appeared in his lifetime — Chashm-e-Nigaraan (1962), Dasht-e-Imkaan (1964) and Nakhl-e-Gumaan (1983) — and his two-volume critical survey of modern Urdu poetry, Jadeed Urdu Shaeri, remains a landmark study. His translations of Shakespeare's Othello and Antony and Cleopatra, and most of his translations of French poetry into Urdu, were never published. Forty-three of his ghazals and thirty-seven of his sher survive, and some of his ghazals have been set to music. He died in Karachi on 23 April 1991.

Aziz Lakhnavi, born Mirza Mohammad Hadi in Lucknow in 1882, was a distinguished Persian and Urdu scholar and poet of the Lucknow school. His family, descended from migrants from Shiraz who first settled in Kashmir and later moved to Lucknow under the Awadh nobles, was renowned for scholarship. Educated at home after his father's death when he was seven, he later taught Persian and Urdu at Aminabad School and then became guardian to the siblings of Ali Mohammad Khan, Maharaja of Mahmudabad, spending the rest of his life there. A disciple of Safi Lakhnavi, he practised every poetic form and earned a particular reputation as a qasida poet, praised for the magnanimity of his language and the vitality of his imagination. His works include Gulkadah and the collected Kulliyat-e-Azeez.

Balraj Komal (1928–2013) was one of the leading modern poets of the Urdu nazm in India. Born on 25 September 1928 at Sialkot, he fled to Delhi in the Partition of 1947, carrying the displacement into a lifetime of poetry. After retiring as an Education Officer with the Delhi Administration, he wrote full-time — poems, short stories and criticism — and served on the Delhi Urdu Akademi and the Sahitya Akademi's advisory board. His collection Parindon Bhara Aasman (Sky Full of Birds) won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985; he also won the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Award twice (1971, 1982) and received the Padma Shri in 2011. His nazms — above all 'A Girl Alone' (1948), a Partition-orphaned girl begging a stranger to become her family — made him a poet of displacement, tenderness and quiet revolt. He died in Delhi in 2013, aged 85.

Bismil Azimabadi (1901–1978) was an Indian freedom-fighter poet from Patna, born Syed Shah Mohammad Hasan into a zamindar family of Azimabad. He took "Bismil" — the wounded one — as his pen name and became a disciple of Shad Azimabadi, frequenting the Qutub-khana Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu Library in Patna. He took part in the independence movement and is reported to have recited his poem "Sarfaroshi" at the Calcutta Congress session of 1920. Most of his poetry was lost; what survived was compiled after his death as *Hikayat-e-Hasti* (1980), and he left a short memoir, *Yaraan-i-Maikadah* (1976). He died in Patna on 20 June 1978. The Bihar Urdu Academy's Bismil Azimabadi Award keeps his name alive.

Chaman Lal Chaman (1934–2019) was an Indian-British Punjabi and Urdu poet, lyricist and radio broadcaster based in London. Born on 15 May 1934 in Pasla, in Jalandhar district, he lost his mother as a child and was called by his father to Nairobi, where he became a presenter on The Voice of Kenya. Moving to Britain, he worked for the BBC's Asian service and Panjab Radio, started London's first Indian commercial radio programme, *Geetmala*, and anchored weekly programmes on BBC TV One and BBC Radio Four in the 1990s. His lyrics were sung by Asha Bhosle and Jagjit Singh — his Punjabi song "Saun da Mahina" (1979) remains his best-known lyric — while his Urdu ghazals, including those in *Shora-e-London* (1985) and the collection *Phool Khile Chaman-Chaman* (2010), carry a quieter, city-wise voice. He received the Asian Achievers Gold Award in London in 2010 and died in London on 4 February 2019.

Chandar Bhan Kaifi Dehelvi (1878/79–1941) was a Delhi poet of the late classical tradition, educated in Persian and Urdu, who taught Persian for a long period of time. Known for poems on interesting topics as well as patriotic poems, he carried classical discipline into the colonial era: his ghazals hold personal longing beside national consciousness, and his nazm "Nai-Dehli" mourns and questions the new capital rising over old Delhi's ruins. Thirteen of his ghazals and ten of his nazms survive, with Risala-e-Qaumi Nazm (1908) among his books and Khumnistan-e-Kaifi published posthumously in 1951. He died in 1941.

Chandra Parkash Jauhar Bijnauri (1923–1995) was a traditional-style Urdu poet and beloved mushaira voice, born at Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, in 1923. His father, though not a poet himself, was a connoisseur who loved listening to poets in mushairas, and in that atmosphere the young Bijnauri found his calling, taking counsel on his ghazals from Izhar Hussain Khan Izhar Rampuri. After Partition he made his life in Lahore, where his clear, musical ghazals — of love, separation, the sorrows of the age and the praise of Urdu itself — won him a devoted mushaira following. His collection Auraq-e-Gul appeared in 1986. He died in 1995, leaving 21 ghazals that still carry the traditional ghazal's grace without stiffness.

Chiragh Hasan Hasrat (1904 – 26 June 1955) was a Kashmiri-born poet and journalist, famous for his humorous columns. Born at Poonch in Kashmir, he learned Arabic, Persian and Urdu at home, matriculated from Poonch and took his B.A. from Lahore. He worked for *Zamindar*, *Insaaf* and *Ehsaan*, edited *Fauji Akhbar* during the Second World War, and wrote beloved humorous columns — as Columbus in *Nai Dunya*, as Koocha Gard in *Asr-e-Jadeed*, and as Sindbad Jahazi in the daily *Imroz*. In 1926 he launched his own journal *Aftab* from Calcutta. He wrote sixteen books, including the long poetical narrative *Saguzasht-e-Islam* and studies of Jinnah and Iqbal, though no collection of his poetry was ever published. He died at Lahore on 26 June 1955.

Ehsan Danish (born Ehsan-ul-Haq; died 22 March 1982, Lahore) was a self-taught Urdu poet, prose writer, linguist and lexicographer known as Shair-e-Mazdoor, the Poet of the Workmen. Born in Kandhla, Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, into a poor family, he could not continue formal schooling and taught himself Arabic and Persian. Migrating to Lahore, he worked for years as a labourer — mason, painter's assistant, watchman and more — before establishing himself as a writer and founding the publishing house Maktaba-e-Danish. He wrote more than 80 books of poetry, prose, linguistics and lexicography, including the classic autobiography Jahan-e-Danish, and received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 1978. His early verse was romantic; his mature poetry spoke for labourers and common people in plain, direct Urdu.

Fahmida Riaz (1946–2018), born 28 July 1946 at Meerut in a literary family, was Pakistan's poet of resistance — the woman's voice that refused, for fifty years, to be either decorative or silent. Her father, educationist Riaz-ud-Din Ahmed, was transferred to Sindh, so she grew up in Hyderabad, lost her father at four, and was raised by her mother; her first poem appeared in Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi's Funoon when she was fifteen. Her first collection, Patthar ki Zaban (1967), already spoke a young woman's desire with a directness Urdu had seldom heard; her second, Badan Dareeda (1973) — "the torn-bodied" — was denounced by conservatives as erotic and became a milestone of modern Urdu poetry for exactly that honesty. Under Zia-ul-Haq she was charged with sedition and spent seven years in exile in India, where she was poet-in-residence at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and learnt Hindi. On return she led the National Book Foundation, later headed the Urdu Dictionary Board in Karachi, and kept writing: Godaavari, Khatt-e Marmuz, novels, stories, and the first rhymed Urdu translation of Rumi's Masnavi, Khana e Aab O Gil, alongside translations of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Shaikh Ayaz from Sindhi. Her late poem "Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley" (2014) — addressed across the border — made her, once more, the conscience of two countries at once. She received the Pride of Performance (2010) and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, and died in Lahore on 21 November 2018.

Fayyaz Hashmi (1920–2011) was a Pakistani poet and film lyricist, born in Calcutta in 1920 to the poet and stage-drama writer Syed Muhammad Hussain Hashmi 'Dilgeer'. He began writing songs as a teenager — his early hit "Tasveer teri dil mera behla na sakegi", sung by Talat Mahmood, made the singer famous — and served as resident lyricist of the Gramophone Company of India from 1943 to 1948. After Partition he moved to Lahore, where he helped organise Pakistan's music scene and promoted artists including Farida Khanum; his first Pakistani film songs were for Kunwari Bewa (1956). He is credited with 482 songs for 122 Pakistani films, and his lifetime song count is quoted at over 2,000. Alongside the film work he wrote ghazals, collected in Satah-e-Aaina (1982), winning the Graduate Award three times and the Nigar Award for best song in 1978. He died in Karachi on 29 November 2011.

First Urdu Jnanpith laureate — the poet who gave the modern ghazal an Indian heart.

Ghulam Muhammad Qasir (d. 1999) was a Pakistani Urdu poet from Paharpur, Dera Ismail Khan, counted among the finest modern poets of the Urdu ghazal. A Pashtun who grew up speaking Pashto, he made Urdu his literary home. Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi introduced him in the journal Fanoon in 1977, the year his first collection Tasalsul appeared; Qasmi called him "the poet of continuity". Two further collections followed — Aathwaan Aasman Bhi Neela Hai (1988) and Darya-e-Gumaan (1997) — and his complete works were gathered as Ik Sher Abhi Tak Rehta Hai. By profession a lecturer in Urdu at government colleges across the North-West Frontier Province, he also wrote more than seventy dramas and programmes for PTV Peshawar and Radio Pakistan, including the popular serials Talash and Bhoot Bangla. His ghazal turns away from the beloved alone toward the deprivation and hope of ordinary people — a book instead of gunpowder, a dream instead of despair. He died in Peshawar on 20 February 1999 and is buried there; the Government of Pakistan awarded him the Pride of Performance posthumously in 2006–07.

Gulzar Dehlvi (1926–2020), born Anand Mohan Zutshi, was one of the last voices of Old Delhi's composite Ganga-Jamuni culture — a Kashmiri Pandit who carried the Gita and the Quran in one heart, and wrote Urdu ghazals in a white sherwani with a rose on his chest. Born on 7 July 1926 in Gali Kashmeerian, Old Delhi, to two poets — his father Tribhuvan Nath 'Zar' and his mother Brij Rani 'Be-Zaar' — he was given his pen name 'Gulzar', a bed of roses, by his ustad Bekhud Dehlvi. He took an M.A. from Hindu College, Delhi, and became editor-in-chief of Science Ki Duniya in 1975, Urdu's first science magazine. Jawaharlal Nehru recited his poem 'Zarurat Hai Un Naujawano Ki' from the Red Fort on 15 August 1947. Honoured by the Vice-President of India on his 91st birthday for his lifelong service to Urdu, he died at his Noida home on 12 June 2020, days after recovering from COVID-19, aged 93.

Abu al-Asar Hafeez Jalandhari (Muhammad Abdul Hafeez, 14 January 1900 – 21 December 1982) was the poet whose words became Pakistan's national anthem. Born in Jalandhar, Punjab, to Shams-ud-Din, a Hafiz-e-Quran, his formal schooling ended at the seventh grade — he disliked mathematics and loved only Urdu — yet he educated himself through voracious reading and became a disciple of the Persian poet Maulana Ghulam Qadir Bilgrami. From 1922 to 1929 he edited monthly magazines including Naunehal, Hazar Dastaan, Tehzeeb-e-Niswan and Makhzin, and he threw himself into the Pakistan Movement, using his writing to inspire its cause. After independence in 1947 he migrated to Lahore; in early 1948 he joined the forces for the freedom of Kashmir and was wounded. Out of 723 poets who competed to write Pakistan's national anthem, his lyrics were selected, set to music by Ahmed Ghulam Ali Chagla. His four-volume Shahnama-e-Islam retells the glorious history of Islam in verse, in the manner of Firdowsi's Shahnameh. His poem "Abhi To Main Jawan Hoon", sung by Malika Pukhraj, became a household song. The Government of Pakistan honoured him with the Pride of Performance (1958) and the Hilal-e-Imtiaz. He died in Lahore on 21 December 1982 and lies buried near the Minar-e-Pakistan.

The poet whose pen carried love — and whose slogan, "Inquilab Zindabad", carried a revolution. Syed Fazlul Hasan "Hasrat" Mohani (1875–1951) — the "Mohani" marking his birthplace, Mohan in the Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh — was an Urdu poet of the ghazal and one of the Indian freedom movement's most fearless voices. A graduate of MAO College, Aligarh (1903), he founded the influential journal Urdu-i-Mualla, endured several British prison terms, coined the immortal slogan "Inquilab Zindabad" (Long Live the Revolution), and in 1921 became the first to demand complete independence (Purna Swaraj) at the Ahmedabad Congress session. A founder of the Communist Party of India and a member of the Constituent Assembly, he was equally a poet: essentially a ghazal poet who blended classical and modern styles and kept the ghazal alive when it was being marginalised. His ghazal "Chupke Chupke Raat Din Aansu Bahana Yaad Hai" — immortalised by Ghulam Ali and the film Nikaah — remains among the most sung verses in Urdu. He died in Lucknow on 13 May 1951.

Ibn-e-Insha (1927–1978), born Sher Muhammad Khan in Phillaur, Jalandhar district, Punjab, was one of the most beloved voices of modern Urdu — a poet of distinctive diction laced with the earthy speech of the Hindi-Urdu complex, and one of the finest humorists of Urdu. After Partition he settled in Karachi; he took his B.A. from Punjab University (1946) and M.A. from the University of Karachi (1953), and worked with Radio Pakistan, the Ministry of Culture and the United Nations, whose travels fed his celebrated travelogues — *Chalte Ho To Cheen Ko Chaliye*, *Awara Gard Ki Diary*, *Ibn-e-Battuta Ke Taqabum Mein*, *Duniya Gol Hai*. His poetry collections *Chand Nagar*, *Is Basti Ke Ik Kooche Mein* and *Dil-e-Wehshi*, his children's verse *Bloo Ka Basta*, and his Urdu translation of Chinese poems (*Chini Nazmein*, 1960) followed. He received the Pride of Performance in 1978. He died of Hodgkin's lymphoma in London on 11 January 1978 and was buried in Karachi.

Irfan Siddiqi (1939–2004) was a prominent modern Urdu poet of the neo-classical school, born at Badayun, Uttar Pradesh, on 8 January 1939. He took a postgraduate degree in sociology and joined the Central Information Service in 1962, serving in the Press Information Bureau until his retirement in 1997 as Deputy Principal Information Officer — a government career he carried alongside a lifetime of poetry. His collections run from *Canvas* (1978) through *Shab-e-Darmiyan* (1984), *Saat Samawat* (1992), *Ishq-Nama* (1997) and *Hawa-e-Dasht-e-Mariya* (1998), gathered in *Dariya* (1999). Classical in form and contemporary in feeling, his ghazals keep the old architecture — dream, lamp, night, desert — and fill it with a modern inwardness. He died at Lucknow on 15 April 2004.

The pioneer of children's Urdu poetry — the schoolroom verses generations learned by heart. Ismail Merathi (1844–1917), born Muhammad Ismail in Meerut, is the pioneer of children's Urdu poetry. Home-schooled, then trained in Persian under Mirza Rahim Beg (a contemporary of Ghalib), he took a teaching certificate from the Normal School, Meerut, and spent his working life as an educationist — Persian teacher at Saharanpur (1867/68), then at the Central Normal School, Agra (1888), retiring in 1899. His fame rests on poems a child can sing and a sage can quote: *Nasihat*, *Barsaat*, *Humari Gaye*, *Subah Ki Aamad*, *Sach Kaho* — in Pakistan's primary-school curriculum to this day. He translated English poems into Urdu (*Reza-e-Jawaher*, 1885), wrote the geography textbook and the Urdu primers that taught generations to read (*Urdu Zuban Ka Qayeda*, *Urdu Ki Pehli* through *Panchvi Kitab*), and compiled his *Kulliyat-e-Ismail* (1910). A philanthropist, he founded the Madrasa-tul-Banat girls' school in Meerut in 1909 (today the Ismail National Mahila PG College), and the British government honoured him with the title "Khan Sahib" (1912). He died in Meerut on 1 November 1917, aged seventy-three.

Jagan Nath Azad (1918–2004) was an Indian Urdu poet, writer and academician, and the foremost modern authority on the life and thought of Muhammad Iqbal. Born on 5 December 1918 at Isa Khel in Mianwali district, the son of the poet Tilok Chand Mehroom, he studied at Gordon College, Rawalpindi, and at Punjab University, Lahore, before a long career in journalism and government service in Delhi and Srinagar. After retiring in 1977 he became Professor and Head of Urdu at the University of Jammu. He wrote more than seventy books — poetry, criticism, biography and travelogue — including about a dozen studies of Iqbal in Urdu and English and an Urdu translation of Iqbal's Javed Nama. He is widely credited with writing Pakistan's first national anthem at Muhammad Ali Jinnah's request in 1947. He presided over the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu (Hind) from 1993 until his death in New Delhi on 24 July 2004.

Jalil Hassan 'Jalil' Manikpuri (1862–1946) was a post-classical Urdu poet of the Lucknow tradition and court poet of Hyderabad. Born in Manakpur, district Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, he was the eldest son of Abdul Karim, memorised the Qur'an by twelve, and studied Persian and Arabic at Lucknow's Madrasa Farangi Mahal. With his elder brother Khalil, also a poet, he became a disciple of Amir Ahmed Minai, who entrusted him with his great dictionary Amir-ul-Lughat. Following Minai to Hyderabad in 1900, Jalil succeeded Dagh Dehlvi as Ustad-e-Shah — court poet to Nizam VII Mir Osman Ali Khan — in 1909, a position he held through decades of honoured leisure. His collections include Taj-e-Sukhan, Sartaj-e-Sukhan and the later Kainat-e-Jalil. Known for flawless, fluent diction without obscurity, he wrote ghazals of love, beauty and longing in a classical mould. He died in Hyderabad on 6 January 1946 and was buried at Dargah Yusufain.

Jamal Ehsani (1951–1998) was a Pakistani poet noted for his work in the ghazal, and a favourite poet in the student circles of Urdu literature. Born in Sargodha on 21 April 1951, he received his primary education there and moved to Karachi at a very young age, where he continued his studies and worked in a variety of jobs. Two of his poetry books were published in his lifetime — *Sitara-e-Safar* (1982) and *Raat Ke Jaage Hue* (1986) — and a third after his death with the help of Dr Fatima Hasan; his complete poetry was published posthumously as *Kulliyat-e-Jamal* (2008). He died in Karachi on 10 February 1998, aged 46.

Jameeluddin Aali (20 January 1925 – 23 November 2015) was a poet, institution-builder and public voice of Pakistan — the man who gave the nation its most sung anthem of itself and revived the doha in Urdu. Son of Nawab Sir Amiruddin Ahmed Khan of Loharu, himself a poet, and Syeda Jamila Begum, from Khwaja Mir Dard's family — his paternal grandfather was a disciple and friend of Ghalib — he took a BA in Economics from Anglo Arabic College, Delhi (1944), and migrated to Karachi on 13 August 1947. He passed the CSS examination in 1951, joined the Pakistan Taxation Service and rose to income-tax commissioner, served as Officer on Special Duty at President House (1959–1963), joined the National Bank of Pakistan in 1967 and retired as vice-president in 1988, and took an LLB/FEL from the University of Karachi (1971). Alongside that career he co-founded the Pakistan Writers' Guild, served as honorary secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu Pakistan for decades, chaired the Urdu Dictionary Board, and wrote a newspaper column for some fifty years. His long poem Insaan runs to some 4,000 verses; his travelogues are Duniya Mere Aage and Tamasha Mere Aage; his collections include Ghazlein Dohey Geet, La Hasil, Goshai-e-Bisaat, Harf-e-Chand and Aye Mere Dasht-e-Sukhan. He revived the doha in Urdu, wrote the milli naghma "Jeevay Jeevay Pakistan" (named here, never quoted), and received the Pride of Performance (1991), Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2004) and Kamal-e-Fun (2006). He served as a Senator from 1997 to 2003.