Mulla Wajhi

The Deccan's first classic — the masnavi and prose tale that gave Urdu its southern beginning. Mulla Wajhi (real name Asadullah; birth year not known — died about 1665–1672, Golconda, Deccan) was the first great poet of the Deccan and the founder of Urdu poetry and prose in the south. Born in Golconda during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Qutb Shah, from a family said to have come from Khurasan, he rose to become the first poet laureate of the Golconda court under Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. In 1609 he wrote Qutb Mushtari, a romance in verse telling the love of Prince Qutb Shah for the princess Mushtari, a work counted among the first long poems in Urdu. After the king's death he fell from favour, and lived in hardship and obscurity under the pious Muhammad Qutb Shah, until Abdullah Qutb Shah recalled him to honour. At the sultan's command he wrote Sab Ras in 1634, a prose allegory of love in which a prince's search for his beloved becomes a teaching on conduct and the life of the spirit — the first great work of Urdu prose. He also wrote Taj-ul-Haqaiq, and marsiyas for the mourning gatherings of his time, one of which, on Husain, was long sung. His verse and prose gave the language of the Deccan its first classics, and for some two and a half centuries after him his books were loved and read across the Deccan.