Muhammad Nusrati

Muhammad Nusrati (d. 1674) was a seventeenth-century Dakhni poet of the Adil Shahi court at Bijapur, where he rose to poet laureate. Born in the Carnatic region, he lived for a time as a Sufi dervish before coming to Bijapur, where he became a mansabdar under Sultan Ali Adil Shah II and was named malik al-shu'ara, king of poets, for his 'Ali-nama. That masnavi, patterned on the Persian Shah-nama, celebrates Ali II's wars against the Mughals and Marathas and is the earliest panegyric of a ruler in Dakhni. His earlier romance masnavi Gulshan-i 'Ishq (1657/1658) follows Prince Manohar's quest for Madhumalati to their union in a rose garden. His final poem, Tarikh-i Sikandari, celebrates Bahlol Khan's victory over Shivaji at Umrani in 1672. Writing in archaic, complex Dakhni, Nusrati is remembered as Bijapur's greatest poet, and as a theorist who first separated a poem's theme (mazmun) from its deeper meaning (ma'ni).