Saghar Nizami

Aligarh's star of the modern ghazal — the dramatist of Anarkali, honoured with the Padma Bhushan. Saghar Nizami (1905–1984), born Samad Yar Khan on 21 December 1905 at Aligarh, was an Indian Urdu poet of ghazal and nazm, and one of the chief revivers of the Urdu poetic drama. His father, Sardar Ahmed Yaar Khan, was a well-known medical doctor in the service of the British government of India. Saghar was among the earliest disciples of Seemab Akbarabadi, and from 1923 to 1932 he edited Paimana, a monthly magazine published by his teacher in Agra. In 1933 he moved to Meerut and founded Adabi Markaz, a publishing house which in its very first year introduced Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi to the Urdu literary world by publishing Tullu, the latter's first collection of poems. His own collections include Subuhi (1934), Badah-e-Mashriq (1934), Kahkashan (1934), Rangmahal (1943), Mauj-e-Sahil (1949) and Nehrunama (1967). His great verse drama Anarkali was first broadcast as a radio script in 1958 and published in 1963; he also wrote Nehru Nama (1967), Samandar ki Devi (1972) and Mash'al-e-Azadi (1980), for which he received the Urdu Academy Award in 1981. He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1969 and the Ghalib Award in 1982, and he worked in All India Radio. He died on 27 February 1984 at Delhi, aged 78.