Muztar Khairabadi

Muztar Khairabadi (1865–1927) was a distinguished Urdu poet of the classical tradition, born in Khairabad into a family steeped in scholarship and poetry. His grandfather was the scholar-poet Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, and his first teacher in poetry was his mother, herself a learned poet in Urdu, Persian and Arabic. After her death he sent work to Ameer Minai, who returned it saying it needed no correction. Muztar served in the princely states of Tonk and Rampur and spent much of his life in Gwalior, receiving the titles Eitbar-ul-Mulk and Iftikhar-ul-Shaura. He wrote ghazals, marsiyas, naats and long narrative poems, including Nazr-e-Khuda, Milaad-e-Mustafa and Behr-e-Taweel, and edited the literary magazine Karishma-e-Dilbar. Much of his work was later lost; a five-volume collection, Kharman, was published from his surviving papers. He was the father of poet-lyricist Jan Nisar Akhtar and grandfather of Javed Akhtar.