Mirza Salamat Ali Dabeer

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.