Poets Directory (شعرائے کرام)

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.

Lucknow's "fire" of the ghazal — idiom-rich verse, Nasikh's great rival.

Hashmi Bijapuri was a seventeenth-century Deccani poet of the Adil Shahi court at Bijapur, remembered as the first Rekhti poet and as the author of the masnavi *Yusuf Zelkha*. Writing in Dakhni Urdu before Rekhti had a name, he gave his ghazals a woman's voice and a woman's vocabulary, drawing his imagery from the domestic world of elite households rather than only from the conventional garden of the classical ghazal. His surviving Diwan, published in modern times as *Deewan-e-Hashmi*, therefore reads as a bridge: it keeps the ghazal's form while opening it to everyday speech, household detail, and a frankly female point of view. Later Lucknow poets made Rekhti famous, but Hashmi's Bijapur ghazals are its earliest full flowering, and they remain the key evidence for how Urdu poetry first learned to speak in a woman's idiom.

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.

Mirza Hatim Ali Beg — known by his pen name Mehr — was a classical Urdu poet of the nineteenth century and a contemporary and friend of Mirza Ghalib. He began writing poetry at about fourteen and soon won notice for his fluency, his smooth diction, and his command of language; he was also skilled in composing chronograms. By profession he was a High Court lawyer, and after the upheaval of 1857 he was rewarded for his loyalty to the government with robes of honour and the grant of two villages, whose income let him live the rest of his life in comfort. He also served as an honorary magistrate in Agra. His works include Diwan-e-Mehr, Para-e-Arooz, Ayagh-e-Farangistan, Almas-e-Darakhshan, and several masnavis, among them Masnavi Shua-e-Mehr and Masnavi Dagh-e-Figar. Ghalib admired his Shuaa-e-Mehr and corresponded with him. Mehr died in 1879. His ghazals survive as a fluent, witty voice from the last generation of the Delhi tradition before the old order passed.

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.

Muhammad Mazharuddin Ibn-e-Nishati was a seventeenth-century Dakhni court poet of Golconda under Sultan Abdullah Qutb Shah, remembered for a single great work: the masnavi Phulban ("Flower Garden"), composed in 1656. In about 3,500 lines and 2,000 couplets, Phulban retells in Dakhni Urdu the Persian Basatin ("Gardens") of Ahmad Zubairi, a fourteenth-century work from the reign of Muhammad bin Tughluq. It is a romance of adventures, anecdote leading into anecdote, opening with a tale told by a dervish to the king of a mythical city of gold, and following, among others, Princess Samanbar's search for Prince Humayun. Literary histories place Nishati among the major poets of the first Dakhni period, beside Wajhi, Ghawwasi and Nusrati. His surviving ghazal, in the same Dakhni, is a poet's boast in garden language: his garden is ever fresh, his bouquet always in bloom, and every verse stands out in delicacy like the brow of the beauties.

Shaikh Imdad Ali, known by his takhallus Bahr, was a nineteenth-century poet and scholar of Lucknow and a disciple of Imam Bakhsh Nasikh. Born around 1810, he devoted his life to language itself: he was praised for his precision of expression, his linguistic research, and his art of presentation, and his prose work *Bahrul Bayan* takes up the rules of Urdu. Patronage took him briefly to Rampur, where Nawab Kalb Ali Khan honoured his learning with a salary, but he returned to Lucknow and lived on a small stipend from the daughter of Nawab Amjad Ali Shah. He never compiled his Diwan in his lifetime; after his death in 1878 his friend Syed Muhammad Khan Rand gathered it, and the sole manuscript of *Bahrul Bayan* survives in the Raza Library, Rampur. Bahr's ghazals are those of a craftsman — witty, exact, and fond of turning a familiar image until it surprises.

Lucknow's dazzling wit — the poet-linguist who gave Urdu its first grammar and its most playful tales.

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.

Mirza Jafar Ali Hasrat was an eighteenth-century Lucknow poet and a prominent contemporary of Mir Taqi Mir, known for his depiction of physicality in romantic poetry. He belonged to the early Lucknow school, at a moment when Urdu ghazal was finding a voice distinct from Delhi's, and his influence is visible in his most famous disciple, Qalandar Bakhsh Jurat, who carried the same frank, bodily idiom further. Hasrat's own surviving work is small — one ghazal and two celebrated couplets, with a *Kulliyat-e-Hasrat* published in 1966 — but its note is unmistakable: a lover who accepts the beloved's cruelty as the beloved's pleasure, and who would rather be kept in the cage than freed without wings. That combination of devotion and defiance, tenderness and bodily directness, marks him as a Lucknow voice in his own right, not merely as Mir's contemporary.

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.

Jan Nisar Akhtar (18 February 1914 – August 1976) was a Progressive poet who carried Urdu verse from the mushaira into the cinema hall. Son of the poet Muztar Khairabadi and great-grandson of Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, he took a BA (Hons) and MA in Urdu from Aligarh Muslim University, lectured at Victoria College, Gwalior (1940), and became Professor of Urdu at Hamidia College, Bhopal. A member of the Progressive Writers' Movement, he moved to Bombay in 1949 and became a Bollywood lyricist, writing 151 songs — among them Yasmin (1955), "Aankhon Hi Aankhon Mein" in CID (1956), Prem Parbat (1974), Noorie (1979) and "Ae Dil-e-Naadaan" in Razia Sultan (1983). His poetry collections include Nazr-e-Butaan, Salaasil, Javidaan, Pichali Pehar, Ghar Angan and Khaak-e-Dil, which won the 1976 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu. His style is romantic and revolutionary at once, in simple but eloquent language with extensive Hindi words. He was the father of the lyricist Javed Akhtar and the psychoanalyst Salman Akhtar.

Ali Sikandar (1890–1960), known by his takhallus **Jigar Moradabadi**, was one of the great Urdu ghazal poets of the twentieth century. Born in Moradabad, he lost his father at an early age, received an oriental education in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and briefly worked as a travelling salesman. Still in his teens he moved to Gonda, near Lucknow, where he befriended the poet Asghar Gondvi and made the town his permanent home. His first lessons in poetry came from his father Ali Nazar, a poet himself; he later sought guidance from Dagh Dehlavi. An iconic mushaira poet famed for musical, romantic verse on love and wine, he published *Daagh-e-Jigar* (1928), *Shola-e-Toor* (1932) and *Aatish-e-Gul* (1954), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958. He was the second poet after Muhammad Iqbal to receive an honorary D.Litt. from Aligarh Muslim University, and a mentor to Majrooh Sultanpuri. He is known as *Rais-ul-Mutaghazzileen* — the prince of ghazal writers.

Joshish Azimabadi (1737–1801) was a classical Urdu poet of Azimabad — the 18th-century name for Patna in Bihar — and a prominent contemporary of Mir Taqi Mir. He wrote "at far-off Azimabad in Delhi style," proof that the Delhi ghazal had travelled well beyond the capital by the mid-1700s and found a serious practitioner in the east. Little else about his life is preserved: no given name, teacher or court attachment is reliably recorded, and his work survives principally through his diwan, Deewan-e-Joshish, in a 1976 Bihar Urdu Academy edition. What the couplets show is a poet equally at home in love's dishevelled complaint and in Sufi argument. He turns the beloved's tress into a mirror of his own distraught state, blesses a cruel beloved with ironic courtesy, and, in his most philosophical verses, dissolves the quarrel of temple and sanctuary into one truth: the Kaaba and the idol-house are one, and the only road worth taking leads to the house of the heart.

The progressive poet who carried Urdu into Hindi cinema — from "Kar chale hum fida" to "Waqt ne kiya". Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi (1919–2002), takhallus Kaifi — "Azmi" from his Azamgarh roots — was born on 14 January 1919 in Mijwan, Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, and died in Mumbai on 10 May 2002. At eleven he composed his first ghazal ("Itna to zindagi mein kisi ke khalal paDe") and recited it at a mushaira — his father had to be convinced the verse was truly the boy's own. The Quit India agitation of 1942 ended his formal studies of Persian and Urdu; in 1943 he joined the Communist Party of India as a full-time worker and became a leading voice of the Progressive Writers' Movement, writing for the party paper *Qaumi Jung* in Bombay alongside Ali Sardar Jafri. His first collection, *Jhankar* (1943), was followed by *Aakhir-e-Shab*, *Sarmaya*, and the celebrated *Awaara Sajde*, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award (1975); he also received the Padma Shri (1974) and the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (2002). As Hindi cinema's lyricist he is remembered for *Kaagaz Ke Phool* (1959), *Haqeeqat* (1964), and the all-verse dialogue of *Heer Raanjha* (1970); his story and dialogues for *Garam Hawa* (1973) won three Filmfare awards. His nazms — "Aurat", "Makaan", "Daaera" — gave progressive thought its most humane Urdu voice.

Kaleem Aajiz (birth year unknown–2015) was an Indian Urdu poet from Telhara in Bihar, widely regarded as a classical poet in the tradition of Mir Taqi Mir. A gold medallist in B.A. from Patna College, he took his M.A. in Urdu and his PhD (1965) from Patna University, where he then lectured in Urdu for decades and later chaired the Urdu Advisory Committee of the Government of Bihar. His first book of ghazals was released in 1976 by the President of India, and in the 1960s and 1970s he was the only Urdu poet representing Bihar at the annual Red Fort mushaira. His books include Woh Jo Shairi Ka Sabab Hua, written in the wake of Partition violence that took members of his family, and Jahan Khushboo Hi Khushboo Thi. He received the Padma Shri in 1989 and the Ghalib Award, and died on 14 February 2015 at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.

The poet of the Rooh — writing the soul's journey home. Kamal Malhiabadi (Kamaal Ahmad Khan) is a contemporary Urdu poet from Malhiabad, Uttar Pradesh, now based in Houston, Texas. His sher, written in the Sufi tradition, return again and again to one journey: the rooh — the soul that comes from Allah and returns to Him — and the body it briefly lodges in, a saraye, a rented house on the way. Through his series Noor-e-Kalam and Rooh-e-Kalam, and through Safha Global, the literary archive he founded to preserve the heritage of Malhiabad and Avadh for the coming generations, he pairs every sher with its decoding — the concept at its heart, opened layer by layer. His family has served Urdu for generations through Bazm-e-Urdu, the literary organisation led by his younger brother, Rehan Khan. He is writing the history of his homeland, Malhiabad, and a memoir, "Meray Safar Malhiabad Say America Tak".

Khalid Ahmad (1943–2013) was a Pakistani Urdu poet, playwright and columnist who gave the ghazal new progressive trends. Born on 5 June 1943 in Lucknow, the son of writer and politician Mohammad Mustafa Khan 'Maddah' and brother of the celebrated fiction writers Khadija Mastoor and Hajira Masroor, he migrated to Pakistan after Partition and took an MSc in Physics from Government College, Lahore. He worked as an information officer at WAPDA, retiring as Deputy Controller, while writing the column 'Lamha-Lamha' for the Daily Imroz and later for Jang and Nawa-i-Waqt, plays for Pakistan Television — Kajal Ghar, Kiran and Ghubar — and editing the monthly literary magazine Bayaz for twenty-two years. His books include Daraz Palkon ke Saaye Saaye, Ek Mutthi Hawa, Pehli Sada Parinde Ki and Hatheliyon par Charagh. He received the Pride of Performance in 2011 and died in Lahore on 19 March 2013.

Khalil-ur-Rehman Azmi was an Indian Urdu poet and literary critic, and one of the founding fathers of modern Urdu criticism in the subcontinent. Born on 9 August 1927 at Sedhan Sultanpur in Azamgarh district, to Maulana Muhammad Shafi, founder of Madarsatul Islah, he was educated at Aligarh Muslim University, where he stood first-class first in his M.A. in Urdu (1950), tutored the young British Urdu scholar Ralph Russell, and took his Ph.D. in 1957 on the Progressive literary movement in Urdu. He joined Aligarh's Urdu department as lecturer in 1952, became Reader in 1966, and was posthumously elevated to Professor. Imprisoned in 1949 for his political views, he remained aligned with the Progressive Writers' Movement while pioneering modernism in Urdu poetry. His collections include Kaghzi Pairahan (1953) and Naya Ahad Nama (1965), whose title nazm 'Khwabon se dar lagta hai' is among his best-known poems; Zindagi Ae Zindagi appeared posthumously in 1983. He died of leukaemia at Aligarh on 1 June 1978, the year he received the Ghalib Award for Urdu Poetry.

Khumar Barabankvi (1919–1999), born Mohammad Haider Khan on 15 September 1919 at Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, was the classical ghazal's great mushaira voice — a poet whose singing delivery made him, with Jigar Moradabadi, a guarantee of any mushaira's success. He grew up in a house of poets: his father Dr Ghulam Haider wrote salaams and marsiyas as "Bahar", and his uncle Qaraar Barabankvi corrected his early verse. After high school at Government College, Barabanki, he left intermediate studies at Lucknow for poetry, and chose the classical ghazal as his lifelong service — "after analyzing all the genres of speech, I found the classical ghazal to be the most suitable," he wrote. In 1945 he came to Bombay with Jigar and Majrooh Sultanpuri for a mushaira; A. R. Kardar heard him and asked for a song for Shah Jahan, sung by K. L. Saigal — the start of a film career that included Saaz aur Awaaz and K. Asif's Love and God, though he soon grew dismayed at falling film standards and returned to the ghazal. His collections Aatish-e-Tar, Raqs-e-Mai and Shab-e-Taab carry the voice his audiences knew: gentle, musical, steeped in love and longing, and later, after he gave up drinking, in a deeper tenderness. He died on 19 February 1999 and lies at Karbala Civil Lines, Barabanki, where the Khumar Memorial Academy keeps his name.

Khwaja Aziz-ul-Hasan Ghori "Majzoob" (1884–1944), born 12 June 1884 at Orai in Jhelum district, U.P., was a Sufi poet of the Chishti-Sabiri tradition and an authorized disciple and khalifa of Ashraf Ali Thanvi. He first wrote under the takhallus "Hasan"; after coming under Thanvi's influence he became "Majzoob" — the absorbed one. Educated at Aligarh (B.A., LL.B.), he served first in the excise department and then seven years as deputy collector; finding the post against his temperament, he took a lower salary in the education department, where he served as deputy inspector of Islamic makatib and then Inspector of Schools (U.P.), retiring on pension. He had no ustad in poetry; his kalam — hamd, munajat, na'at, marsiya, ghazal, nazm — is suffused with spirituality and gnosis (irfan). Nearly two hundred khulafa of Thanvi recited his mystical verse with devotion, and it remains beloved in the Thanvi silsila to this day. Per his will his kalam was first published as Kalam-e-Majzoob and then continuously as Kashkol-e-Majzoob. In prose he compiled Ashraf-us-Sawaneh (4 volumes, 1935–1943), the first and most authoritative biography of his master. He died at Orai on 17 August 1944.

Khwaja Ghulam Farid (1845–1901) was a Sufi poet and saint of the Saraiki country, born at Chachran Sharif in the old Bahawalpur state, on the banks of the Indus. The son of Khwaja Khuda Bakhsh, he lost both parents while still a boy and was raised and taught by his elder brother, Fakhr Jahan. He belonged to the Chishti-Nizami order, and became the custodian of the shrine at Kot Mithan, across the river from his birthplace. In 1876 he made the pilgrimage to Makkah. He was called the poet of seven tongues — Saraiki, Urdu, Persian, Sindhi, Punjabi, Braj Bhasha and Arabic — but his fame rests on his Saraiki verse: the kafis of the Diwan-e-Farid, sung still at shrines and festivals, where the desert of Rohi, the tall red date-palms, the cranes in flight and the long wait for the Beloved carry a longing that is at once earthly and divine. He also left an Urdu divan of ghazals and prose works in Persian. He died in 1901 at Chachran and was buried at Kot Mithan, where his shrine still draws devotees from across the Saraiki country, and his yearly urs keeps his kafis alive in song.

The Sufi saint of Delhi's classical school — the poet who made pain a prayer.

Kunwar Mohinder Singh Bedi 'Sahar' (1909–1992), born at Chak Bedi in Montgomery District, Punjab, was an Urdu poet whose pen name meant "daybreak" — and whose verse lived up to it. Born into a Bedi zamindar family tracing its line to Guru Nanak, he fell in love with Urdu in school and began writing ghazals while studying at Lahore. He joined the Indian Administrative Service, served as City Magistrate of Delhi, and worked alongside Nehru and Patel to restrain violence and resettle refugees after Partition — the same Partition that uprooted his own family to Fazilka. His poetry is traditional in form and humane in temper: love and yearning beside unity, peace between India and Pakistan, and a gentle humour. Khushwant Singh called him "the stoutest bridge between India and Pakistan". His first collection, *Tulu-e-Sahar* (1962), played on his own name — the advent of daybreak — and his autobiographical poems *Yadon Ka Jashn* (1983) remain a document of Punjab before and after Partition. Jagjit Singh sang eight of his ghazals on the album *Forget Me Not*. He died on 18 July 1992.

Lala Madhav Ram Jauhar — pen name Jauhar — was a classical Urdu poet of the nineteenth century and a contemporary of Mirza Ghalib. He held a highly respected post in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, placing him at the heart of Delhi's literary world in its final Mughal years. A Hindu poet writing fluent, graceful Urdu, he became known for ghazals of love, longing, and the beloved's glance — couplets in which a signal before the gathering, a withheld meeting, or a hidden love that cannot stay hidden carries the whole poem. About forty of his ghazals and 174 of his couplets survive, along with his prose work Insha-e-Madhoram. He lived through the passing of the Mughal order into British rule, and his verse keeps the courtly grace of that world while speaking plainly of separation and unmet desire. Jauhar died in 1889. His couplets remain widely quoted, including one carried into the film Prem Kahani (1975).

Mah Laqa Bai "Chanda" (7 April 1768 – August 1824), born Chanda Bibi in Aurangabad, was a tawaif-turned-court-poet of Hyderabad — the first woman Urdu poet with a published diwan. Daughter of the courtesan Raj Kunwar (who had migrated from Rajputana) and Bahadur Khan, a Mughal mansabdar, she was raised by her childless aunt Mehtaab Ma, the favoured courtesan of Nawab Rukn-ud-Daula, who gave her an elite education. The second Nizam, Mir Nizam Ali Khan (Asaf Jah II), conferred the title "Mah Laqa Bai" (Visage of the Moon) and appointed her to the *omarah*, the highest nobility; she advised on state policy, accompanied him to three battles in male attire, and was celebrated as a thumri singer and Deccani Kathak dancer — the first woman of the region to recite in a mushaira. Her diwan, *Gulzar-e-Mahlaqa* (39 ghazals of 5 couplets each), was printed in 1824 after her death — the first published diwan by any woman Urdu poet; her own 1798 manuscript *Diwan-e-Chanda* (125 ghazals, gifted to Captain Malcolm in 1799) survives in the British Museum. She died in Hyderabad in 1824 and lies in the mausoleum she built at Moula-Ali, restored in 2010. She is also held, by some scholars, to be the inspiration behind Mirza Hadi Ruswa's *Umrao Jaan Ada* (1899).

Maharaja Sir Kishan Prasad Shad (1864 – 13 May 1940) of Hyderabad was a poet first and a prime minister second — or, as Hyderabad liked to say, a poet who happened to rule. A childhood friend of Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan and heir to a family that traced itself to Raja Todar Mal, he became Peshkar of Hyderabad State in 1892 and its Dewan (Prime Minister) in 1901, taking the title Yamin-us-Saltanat, "right hand of the realm", and the rank of Maharaja. In his first tenure he raised the state's revenues, organised relief after the great Musi Flood of 1908, and left the treasury fuller than he found it; after resigning in 1912 he was called back by Nizam Osman Ali Khan in November 1926 and served until March 1937, passing the Mulki regulations that reserved posts for Hyderabad's own people. He was knighted KCIE in 1903 and GCIE in 1910. Through all of it he remained a disciple of Dagh Dehlvi, writing Urdu and Persian poetry under the takhallus "Shad" — happy — in a Sufi key: ghazal, naat and marsiya, collected in Bagh-e-Shad (1890) and later volumes, and shared in his own magazine Mahbub al-Kalam. His house was a morning court of poets, painters and musicians from across India, Persia and Arabia, and his life — seven wives, Hindu and Muslim, each following her own faith — was itself an argument for the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb he championed. At his death in Hyderabad on 13 May 1940, the Nizam said society had witnessed "the departure of the last vestige of the Mughal Empire".

Majeed Amjad (1914–1974) was a Pakistani modern Urdu poet, counted among the founding fathers of modern Urdu poetry and described as a philosophical poet of depth and sensitivity. Born Abdul Majid on 29 June 1914 in Jhang, Punjab, he was taught Arabic and Persian by his maternal grandfather, took his bachelor's degree from Islamia College Lahore in 1934, and edited the weekly Arooj in Jhang. He then served in the Food Department, spending the last twenty-eight years of his life in Sahiwal, where he retired as Assistant Food Controller in 1972 and died on 11 May 1974; he was buried in Jhang. His first collection, Shab-e-Rafta (1958), with a preface in verse, was the only book published in his lifetime; Shab-e-Rafta Ke Baad followed posthumously in 1976, and his complete works, Kuliyat-e-Majeed Amjad, were edited by Khawaja Muhammad Zakariya in 1989. Away from the great literary centres, he built a poetry of striking images and unexpected connections — philosophical, introspective, and deeply personal, in ghazal, nazm and free verse.

Majrooh Sultanpuri (1919–2000), born Asrar ul Hassan Khan in Sultanpur, U.P., was a Progressive Urdu poet and one of Hindi cinema's most celebrated lyricists. A trained Unani physician (Hakim) and disciple of Jigar Moradabadi, he left medicine for poetry, joined films in 1946 with Shahjahan ("Jab dil hi toot gaya"), and served two years in prison in 1949 for his leftist verse. Across six decades he wrote more than two thousand film lyrics — from Andaz and Dosti ("Chahunga main tujhe sanjh savere", Filmfare Best Lyricist 1965) to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar ("Pehla nasha") — while his fifty-odd ghazals and two notable nazms carried the Progressive fire; none is more famous than "main akela hi chala tha jaanib-e-manzil magar", which Wikipedia's own article calls one of the best-known verses of Urdu poetry. He became the first lyricist to receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1993), and also received the Ghalib Prize and the Iqbal Samman. He died in Mumbai on 24 May 2000.

Makhdoom Mohiuddin (1908–1969), born Abu Sayed Muhammad Makhdoom Mohiuddin in Andole village, Medak district, Hyderabad State, was the revolutionary Urdu poet known as "Shayar-e-Inquilab" (Poet of the Revolution). He founded the Progressive Writers Union in Hyderabad, taught Urdu literature at City College (1934), joined the Communist Party of India, and stood at the forefront of the 1946–47 Telangana Rebellion against the Nizam; he later became a founder of the CPI in Andhra Pradesh, a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council (1956–1969) and its opposition leader. His collections *Surkh Savera* (1944) and *Gul-e-Tar* (1961) were gathered with the rest of his verse in *Bisat-e-Raqs*, which won the 1969 Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu. His ghazals — "Aap Ki Yaad Aati Rahi Raat Bhar," "Phir Chhidi Raat, Baat Phoolon Ki," "Ek Chameli Ke Mandve Taley" — became immortal through Hindi films. He died in Hyderabad on 25 August 1969.

Meer Syed Ali Ghamgeen Dehlvi was a Sufi poet of Delhi for whom Mirza Ghalib held great devotion. His dates must be read with care: 1753–1851 is sometimes given, a span of ninety-eight years, but his birth year is disputed and is recorded here as Unknown, with 1851 carried as the death year. What is solid is the work: 10 ghazals and 9 sher from him survive, with books including Makhzan-ul-Asrar (his diwan of ghazals), Makashafat-ul-Asrar, and a Diwan-e-Rubaiyat, and later studies of his life and poetry, including a volume on the Persian correspondence between Ghalib and Ghamgeen. His verse is Sufi to the core: the journey within the self, wine as spiritual symbol, death, and the beloved's voice heard at the final hour.

The bohemian who freed the Urdu nazm — symbolism, free verse, and Hindu myth in a life lived by the tavern's edge. Meeraji (1912–1949), born Muhammad Sanaullah Dar into a Kashmiri family of Gujranwala, was one of the founding fathers of the modern Urdu nazm — the pioneer who carried symbolism and free verse into Urdu poetry. Raised in Lahore, he first wrote under the takhallus "Sasri"; a one-sided love for a Bengali girl, Meera Sen, gave him the pen name by which he is remembered. Though brought up in comfort — his father Munshi Mohammad Mahtabuddin was a railway engineer — he left home and family to live as a bohemian wanderer, staying with friends and making a living by selling his songs. He served as poetry editor of the Lahore magazine *Adabi Duniya* (1938), worked for All India Radio in Delhi, wrote literary columns for the monthly *Saqi*, and briefly helped edit *Khayal* in Bombay, settling in Bombay after Partition. Drawn from his teens to Hindu mythology, he wove Hindi vocabulary into his poetry, prose, and letters; he acknowledged his debts to the Sanskrit poet Amaru and the French Baudelaire, and translated Damodar Gupta and Omar Khayyam. His collections include *Meeraji ke Geet*, *Meeraji ki Nazmein*, *Geet hi Geet*, *Paband Nazmein*, and *Teen Rang*; the *Kulliyat-e-Meeraji* appeared in 1988. He died in Bombay in November 1949, aged only thirty-seven.

Mir Hasan (1727–1786), born Mir Ghulam Hasan in Delhi's Syed Wada, was the foremost masnavi poet of Urdu — and the grandfather of Mir Babar Ali Anis, the future king of the marsiya. Trained first by Khwaja Mir Dard, he came of age in a Delhi that was breaking apart: his family moved to Faizabad in Awadh as the invasions pressed, and he later settled at Lucknow, where the displaced Delhi school rebuilt itself under the Nawabs. There he composed, in 1784, the work that made him immortal: Sehr-ul-Bayan, the masnavi romance of Benazir and Badr-e-Munir — a love story told with such sweetness of language that it became the model Urdu narrative poem. Around it stand his other masnavis — Gulzar-e-Iram, the verse-account of the Delhi to Awadh migration; Ramuz-ul-Arifin, a Sufi masnavi; Khwan-e-Nemat, on the dishes of Asaf-ud-Daula's dastarkhwan — plus a ghazal divan and a Persian tazkira of Urdu poets, Tazkira-i-Shuara-i-Urdu. Four of his sons were poets; through Anis, his grandson, his bloodline carried the masnavi's music into the marsiya's age. He died at Lucknow in 1786.