Poets Directory (شعرائے کرام)

Zia Fatehabadi (1913–1986) — born Mehr Lal Soni on 9 February 1913 at Kapurthala, Punjab — was a modern Urdu poet of the ghazal and the nazm, and a disciple of Seemab Akbarabadi in the line of Dagh. His family came from Fatehabad, near Tarn Taran, the town whose name he carried; "Zia", meaning Light, was the pen name his teacher chose for him. He wrote his first ghazal in 1925, still a schoolboy in Jaipur, and became Seemab's disciple in 1930, remaining true to his ustad all his life and working to keep his legacy alive. His first collection, Tullu (Dawn), appeared in 1933 while he was still at college, followed by Noor-e-Mashriq (The Light of the East) in 1937. He took a B.A. with honours in Persian in 1933 and an M.A. in English in 1935, then joined the Reserve Bank of India in 1936, serving for thirty-five years and retiring as Deputy Chief Officer in 1971. He married Raj Kumari in 1942 and made Delhi his home after retirement. Across six decades he produced nineteen works — eleven collections of poetry, among them Nai Subah (1952), Gard-e-Raah (1963), Husn-e-Ghazal (1964), Dhoop aur Chandni (1977), Rang-o-Noor (1981) and Soch ka Safar (1982) — alongside qataat, rubaiyat, geets, sonnets, essays and letters. He never sought public recognition or state awards, and kept a low profile all his life; his verse is plain, musical and hopeful, written in the common man's language, with light and dawn as its abiding images. He died in Delhi on 19 August 1986, after a long illness.

Zia Jalandhari (1923–2012) was a Pakistani Urdu poet, broadcaster and television chief, and a pioneering member of the Halqa-e-Arbab-e-Zauq, the Circle of Connoisseurs. Born Syed Zia Nisar Ahmad on 2 February 1923 in Jalandhar, his family moved to Lahore, where he took an MA in English Literature from Government College and lectured in English at Islamia College. He began his broadcasting career at All India Radio and joined Radio Pakistan in 1948, later serving as Managing Director of Pakistan Television. His poetry — in collections such as Narsa (1966), Sar-e-Sham (1968), Dam-e-Subh (2003) and the Kulliyat-e-Ziya (2007) — carries the Halqa's modernist inwardness: plain speech, moral clarity and the world seen through the beloved's eyes. He received the Pride of Performance in 2006 and a National Literary Award for Dam-e-Subh, and died in Islamabad on 13 March 2012.

Momin Khan Momin was a contemporary and rival of Ghalib known for intricate romantic nuance, astrological mastery, and the iconic couplet Ghalib offered his entire Diwan in exchange for. Explore his book: Diwan-e-Momin – https://safhaglobal.org/ebook/diwan-e-momin

Nida Fazli was a Sahitya Akademi Award winning poet and lyricist who bridged Urdu and Hindi with deep humanist sensitivity, Doha compositions, and colloquial everyday philosophy.

The founder of the Urdu ghazal — the Deccan poet whose diwan taught Delhi the music of Rekhta.

The Naqshbandi saint of Delhi — Sufi, scholar, and one of the four pillars of Urdu poetry.

The poet of the people — father of the Urdu nazm, who sang of bread, festivals, and the common man.

Yahya Aman, known to poetry as Qalandar Bakhsh Jur'at (1748–1809), was the Lucknow school's most exuberant voice. Born in Delhi and raised in Faizabad, he settled in Lucknow, where he entered the service of Mirza Sulaiman Shikoh and became a beloved fixture of the nobility's gatherings with his wit, humour and mischievous storytelling. A disciple of Mirza Ja'far Ali Hasrat and the lifelong friend of Insha Allah Khan 'Insha', Jur'at lost his eyesight in the prime of his youth — yet no other poet, blind or sighted, ever painted the colours of love as he did. Mir Taqi Mir called him a "skirt-chasing poet"; his ghazals depict romantic encounters with unabashed sensuality, though some of his verses also carry the melancholy of the political chaos around him. His *Kulliyaat-e-Jurat* appeared in print in 1968. He died in Lucknow in 1809.

The founder of Rekhti — the 18th-century Delhi poet who gave Urdu poetry a woman's voice.

The poet whose heart carried the whole world's pain — lexicographer of the *Ameer-ul-Lughat*, master of the naat.

The last voice of Mughal Delhi — ghazals of effortless simplicity that charmed commoner and court alike.

The poet who turned Urdu poetry toward reform — Musaddas-e-Hali, Urdu's first critic, and Ghalib's first biographer.

Shaair-e-Inqilab — the poet whose slogan was "revolution, revolution, and revolution."

The "Keats of Urdu poetry" — who made revolution sing, and gave the lonely city its anthem.

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.

Mir Babar Ali Anis (birth year disputed — d. 10 December 1874, Lucknow), known as Mir Anis, was born in Faizabad into a family of poets: his father Mir Khaliq was a marsiya poet and his grandfather Mir Hasan the author of the celebrated masnavi *Sehr-ul-Bayan*. He called himself the fifth generation of Shabbir's (Imam Husain's) praise-singers. A pupil of Imam Bakhsh Nasikh, who gave him the takhallus *Anis*, he first wrote ghazals and then, on his father's counsel, devoted himself to the marsiya, taking the elegy to unprecedented heights. He broadened the form beyond lamentation into realistic battlefield narrative, vivid portraiture of the heroes, landscape, and moral reflection, in language of unmatched sweetness and purity — Muhammad Husain Azad credited him with at least ten thousand elegies. His great contemporary and friendly rival was Mirza Salamat Ali Dabeer. He died in Lucknow in 1874 and lies buried at his residence in Chowk.

Mirza Salamat Ali Dabeer (d. 1875), takhallus Dabeer, was the great marsiya master of 19th-century Lucknow — counted with his contemporary and friendly rival Mir Anis as one of the two founders of the classical Urdu marsiya. Born in Delhi, he began reciting marsiya as a child at Muharram majalis, learned poetry under Mir Muzaffar Husain Zameer, and moved to Lucknow, where he spent his life. As much an erudite scholar as a poet — he composed a be-nuqta (dotless) marsiya, *Mah-e-Kamil*, signing it not "Dabeer" but "Utarid" — he is credited with some three thousand elegies (per Muhammad Husain Azad's *Aab-e-Hayat*). His rivalry with Anis split Lucknow's admirers into the "Aneesiya" and "Dabeeriya" schools, though the two masters themselves remained on cordial terms. When Anis died in 1874, Dabeer mourned him in verse; a year later, in 1875, Dabeer died in Lucknow and was buried there.

Wajid Ali Shah 'Akhtar' (1822–1887) was the last Nawab of Awadh. He ascended the throne of Lucknow in 1847 and ruled for nine years, until the British East India Company annexed his kingdom in February 1856 and removed him. He spent the rest of his life — over three decades — in exile at Matiya Burj (Metiabruz) near Calcutta, where he died in 1887. A poet, playwright, dancer and composer, he was one of the great patrons of the arts: he nurtured the Lucknow gharana of Kathak, staged magnificent rahas, and wrote over forty works in Urdu and Persian — poems, prose and thumris. His most famous couplet — "dar-o-diwar pe hasrat se nazar karte hain / KHush raho ahl-e-watan hum to safar karte hain" — was his farewell to Lucknow, and it lives on in every Urdu speaker's heart.

Brij Narayan Chakbast (1882–1926), who wrote under the pen name Chakbast, was an Urdu poet of Lucknow and one of the founders of patriotic Urdu poetry in the modern age. Born into a Kashmiri Brahmin (Pandit) family at Faizabad on 19 January 1882 — the son of the poet Pandit Udit Narayan Chakbast — he moved to Lucknow as a boy after his father's death and made it his home for life. He earned his B.A. (1905) and LL.B. (1907) from Canning College, Lucknow, and rose to distinction at the Lucknow Bar. A lawyer by profession, he poured his public spirit into verse: he was a strong proponent of the Home Rule movement, helped found the Kashmiri Young Men's Association and the Bahadur Library, and chose the nazm as his chief form — *Subh-e-Watan* (Dawn of the Nation, 1926) made qaumiyat, love of nation, the subject of Urdu poetry without ever letting it collapse into mere propaganda. Secular to the bone, he wrote with equal reverence on Ram, Krishna, and Gokhale. He died suddenly on 12 February 1926 at Rae Bareli railway station, aged only 44, after a paralytic stroke. His philosophical sher *"Zindagi kya hai anasir mein zuhur-e-tartib / Maut kya hai inhin ajza ka pareshan hona"* — heard by millions at the opening of the film *Masaan* (2015) — returned him to public memory nearly a century later.

Syed Wahid-ud-din Ahmed (1863–1955), known to Urdu letters as Bekhud Dehlvi, was a classical ghazal poet of Delhi and among the finest disciples of Dagh Dehlvi. Born at Bharatpur (Rajasthan) on 21 March 1863 to the poet Syed Shams-ud-din 'Salim', he was brought to Delhi as a boy, where Altaf Hussain Hali schooled him in Arabic, Persian, and the craft of verse. In 1891 Hali made him Dagh's disciple, and he soon rose among the best of that illustrious circle — a lineage that also counted Iqbal's teacher among its masters. His ghazals — collected in Guftar-e-Bekhud and Shahsavar-e-Bekhud — are prized for linguistic dexterity and colloquial grace, carrying Dagh's living idiom into the twentieth century with a distinction all his own. His corpus also includes devotional verse, including a naat. He lived to ninety-two, dying in Delhi on 2 October 1955 — a living bridge from the Mughal twilight to independent India.

Shaukat Ali Khan (1879–1941), known to Urdu as Fani Badayuni — "Fani" meaning the mortal, the perishable — is the twentieth century's most uncompromising poet of despair. Born on 13 September 1879 at Islamnagar in the Badaun district of UP, he took his BA (1901) at Bareilly College and a law degree at Aligarh, but the practice of law never held him; a brief editorship of the magazine Tasneem, years of practice in Bareilly, Lucknow and Agra, and finally a head-teachership in Hyderabad (1932–1939) framed a life of narrowing fortunes. The deaths of his wife and his young daughter in the early 1930s sealed his inward turn — he wrote of himself as "a disgrace to my family, a burden on this earth." Called "Mayusi ka shayar" (the poet of despair) and "Sahib-e-gham," Fani took Mir's pathos and Ghalib's intellectual daring and distilled them into an unrelieved existential pessimism: life as a riddle neither to be solved nor explained. His collections Diwan-e Fani, Baqiyat-e Fani and Irfaniyat-e Fani preserve his later work; the early diwans were lost. He died in Hyderabad on 27 August 1941 and is buried there.

Mirza Wajid Hussain (1884–1956), who wrote first as "Yaas" (despair) and then as "Yagana" (the matchless) — finally Yagana Changezi — was born in 1884 at Azimabad, now Patna, into a family that traced its line to Iranian migrants in the Mughal army. Mentored in poetry by Shad Azimabadi, he tutored the Nawab of Awadh's grandson at Matyaburj, Calcutta, before settling in Lucknow — the city that would both make and break him. Egotistical, uncompromising and brutally outspoken, he caused scandal after scandal: he attacked the veneration of Ghalib in his prose work Ghalib-Shikan (1934), questioned Iqbal, and made controversial statements on religion that once got him attacked by a mob. Declared an apostate and humiliated by Lucknow's literary circles, he spent his last years in illness and loneliness, dying on 2 February 1956. His tone — direct, curt, stinging — made him an interrogator of life and art rather than a singer of love: "more than writing about the myriad manifestations of love, he wrote about the manifestations of life". His collections Nishtar-e Yaas (1914), Aayat-e Wijdani (1927), Tarana (1933) and Ganjina (1948) were rescued for posterity in Mushfiq Khwaja's Kulliyat-i Yagana (2003).

Asghar Husain (1884–1936), known by his pen name Asghar Gondvi, was a pre-modern Urdu ghazal poet of rare philosophical depth. Born in the Gorakhpur district in 1884, his family settled in Gonda, where he lived most of his life and from which he took his name. With little formal schooling, he taught himself Urdu, Arabic, Persian, and English, and worked as an editor — first with Urdu Markaz, Lahore, then for many years at Tej Bahadur Sapru's Hindustani Press in Allahabad, editing the magazine Hindustani. A close friend of Jigar Moradabadi (whose Safha profile is in this directory), Asghar was not a prolific writer; he was preoccupied essentially with the idea of perfecting his ghazal. His poetry takes the stock romantic metaphors of the ghazal and re-thinks them in both romantic and spiritualist registers — a soft, melancholic voice that is philosophical without ever losing its music. His best-known sher, "chala jata hun hansta khelta mauj-e-hawadis se / agar aasaniyan hon zindagi dushwar ho jae," has entered the living memory of Urdu. His collections include Nishat-e-Rooh and Surood-e-Zindagi. He died in Allahabad in 1936.

Seemab Akbarabadi (1882–1951), born Aashiq Hussain Siddiqui in Agra, was one of the most prolific poets of twentieth-century Urdu — some seventy-five books, including twenty-two collections of poetry. In 1898 he became a disciple of Daagh Dehlvi (whose Safha profile is in this directory), joining the great classical tradition of the Delhi school. In 1923 he founded the publishing house Qasr-ul-Adab in Agra and launched the monthly Paimana, the weekly Taj, and the monthly Shair — printing not only his own work but that of a generation; his son Aijaz Siddiqi carried Shair on for decades. His ghazals, beloved in the voice of Kundan Lal Saigal, move easily between love, philosophy, and social themes. Late in life he completed Wahi-e-Manzoom, a verse translation of the Quran, published after his death. After Partition he moved to Karachi, where a paralytic stroke in 1949 ended his writing life; he died there on 31 January 1951.