Maulvi Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi

Delhi's deputy who taught a nation to read — the pioneer of the Urdu novel. Maulvi Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi (1830–1912), known as Deputy Nazir Ahmad, was the pioneer of the Urdu novel — a novelist, reformer, scholar and translator. Born at Rehar in the Bijnor district in 1830, to a family of scholars, he was taught Persian and Arabic by his father, a teacher, and in 1842 was sent to study in Delhi, entering Delhi College in 1846. He began as a teacher of Arabic, became a deputy inspector of schools in 1856, and rose to deputy collector in the North-Western Provinces — the post that gave him his familiar name. His novel Mirat-ul-Uroos (1869), the story of two sisters, Asghari and Akbari, written for the education of girls, established the Urdu novel and has never been out of print; Banat-un-Nash, Taubat-un-Nasuh (1873), Fasana-e-Mubtala (1885), Ibn-ul-Waqt (1888) and Ruya-e-Sadiqa followed. A friend and sometime critic of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement, he wrote more than thirty books, translated the Quran into Urdu, and put the Indian Penal Code into Urdu as Taazirat-e-Hind. He died of a stroke at Delhi on 3 May 1912.