Poets Directory (شعرائے کرام)

Azamgarh's poet-lawyer — the freedom fighter whose sher asks what imagination can never reach. Iqbal Suhail (1884–1955), born Iqbal Ahmad Khan on 19 December 1884 at Badhariya village in Azamgarh, was an Indian Urdu poet, Islamic scholar, lawyer, educationist and politician. He took his early schooling under Maulana Mohammed Shafi, one of the founders of Madarsatul Islah at Sarai Mir, and completed his M.A. and LL.B. from Aligarh Muslim University in 1918, returning to Azamgarh to practise law. A freedom fighter, he was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly in 1937 as a candidate of the Indian National Congress, defeating the Muslim League candidate Syed Ali Zaheer, and he served on the executive committee of the Azamgarh Muslim Education Society, which runs Shibli National Post Graduate College and other institutions in the town. His poetry collections include Kulliyat-e-Suhail, Tabish-e-Suhail and Mauj-e-Kausar. He died on 7 November 1955 at Azamgarh, aged 70.

Irfan Siddiqi (1939–2004) was a prominent modern Urdu poet of the neo-classical school, born at Badayun, Uttar Pradesh, on 8 January 1939. He took a postgraduate degree in sociology and joined the Central Information Service in 1962, serving in the Press Information Bureau until his retirement in 1997 as Deputy Principal Information Officer — a government career he carried alongside a lifetime of poetry. His collections run from *Canvas* (1978) through *Shab-e-Darmiyan* (1984), *Saat Samawat* (1992), *Ishq-Nama* (1997) and *Hawa-e-Dasht-e-Mariya* (1998), gathered in *Dariya* (1999). Classical in form and contemporary in feeling, his ghazals keep the old architecture — dream, lamp, night, desert — and fill it with a modern inwardness. He died at Lucknow on 15 April 2004.

The pioneer of children's Urdu poetry — the schoolroom verses generations learned by heart. Ismail Merathi (1844–1917), born Muhammad Ismail in Meerut, is the pioneer of children's Urdu poetry. Home-schooled, then trained in Persian under Mirza Rahim Beg (a contemporary of Ghalib), he took a teaching certificate from the Normal School, Meerut, and spent his working life as an educationist — Persian teacher at Saharanpur (1867/68), then at the Central Normal School, Agra (1888), retiring in 1899. His fame rests on poems a child can sing and a sage can quote: *Nasihat*, *Barsaat*, *Humari Gaye*, *Subah Ki Aamad*, *Sach Kaho* — in Pakistan's primary-school curriculum to this day. He translated English poems into Urdu (*Reza-e-Jawaher*, 1885), wrote the geography textbook and the Urdu primers that taught generations to read (*Urdu Zuban Ka Qayeda*, *Urdu Ki Pehli* through *Panchvi Kitab*), and compiled his *Kulliyat-e-Ismail* (1910). A philanthropist, he founded the Madrasa-tul-Banat girls' school in Meerut in 1909 (today the Ismail National Mahila PG College), and the British government honoured him with the title "Khan Sahib" (1912). He died in Meerut on 1 November 1917, aged seventy-three.

Jagan Nath Azad (1918–2004) was an Indian Urdu poet, writer and academician, and the foremost modern authority on the life and thought of Muhammad Iqbal. Born on 5 December 1918 at Isa Khel in Mianwali district, the son of the poet Tilok Chand Mehroom, he studied at Gordon College, Rawalpindi, and at Punjab University, Lahore, before a long career in journalism and government service in Delhi and Srinagar. After retiring in 1977 he became Professor and Head of Urdu at the University of Jammu. He wrote more than seventy books — poetry, criticism, biography and travelogue — including about a dozen studies of Iqbal in Urdu and English and an Urdu translation of Iqbal's Javed Nama. He is widely credited with writing Pakistan's first national anthem at Muhammad Ali Jinnah's request in 1947. He presided over the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu (Hind) from 1993 until his death in New Delhi on 24 July 2004.

Jalil Hassan 'Jalil' Manikpuri (1862–1946) was a post-classical Urdu poet of the Lucknow tradition and court poet of Hyderabad. Born in Manakpur, district Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, he was the eldest son of Abdul Karim, memorised the Qur'an by twelve, and studied Persian and Arabic at Lucknow's Madrasa Farangi Mahal. With his elder brother Khalil, also a poet, he became a disciple of Amir Ahmed Minai, who entrusted him with his great dictionary Amir-ul-Lughat. Following Minai to Hyderabad in 1900, Jalil succeeded Dagh Dehlvi as Ustad-e-Shah — court poet to Nizam VII Mir Osman Ali Khan — in 1909, a position he held through decades of honoured leisure. His collections include Taj-e-Sukhan, Sartaj-e-Sukhan and the later Kainat-e-Jalil. Known for flawless, fluent diction without obscurity, he wrote ghazals of love, beauty and longing in a classical mould. He died in Hyderabad on 6 January 1946 and was buried at Dargah Yusufain.

Jamal Ehsani (1951–1998) was a Pakistani poet noted for his work in the ghazal, and a favourite poet in the student circles of Urdu literature. Born in Sargodha on 21 April 1951, he received his primary education there and moved to Karachi at a very young age, where he continued his studies and worked in a variety of jobs. Two of his poetry books were published in his lifetime — *Sitara-e-Safar* (1982) and *Raat Ke Jaage Hue* (1986) — and a third after his death with the help of Dr Fatima Hasan; his complete poetry was published posthumously as *Kulliyat-e-Jamal* (2008). He died in Karachi on 10 February 1998, aged 46.

Patna's poet-critic — the eyes teach the lesson of love. Jameel Mazhari (1904–1979), born Syed Kazim Ali on 2 September 1904 at Patna in Bihar, was an Indian Urdu poet, critic and prose writer whose verse joined the classical tradition to modern thought. He took the pen name Jameel and added Mazhari in honour of an elder of his family, Syed Mazhar Hassan, himself a poet. Schooled at Motihari and Muzaffarpur, he went to Calcutta for higher studies, taking his M.A. from Calcutta University in 1931; there he learned from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Aghaz Hashr, Naseer Hussain Khayal and Allama Raza Ali Wahshat, and used to take his verse to Wahshat for correction. After graduation he worked in journalism for about six years, writing political essays, scholarly articles, novels and fiction, and in 1937 he became a publicity officer in the Congress government in Bihar, resigning in 1942 when that government fell. He then withdrew from practical politics and taught Urdu at Patna, at the university and at Patna College, until his retirement in 1964, after which he gave himself wholly to Urdu poetry and literature. His collections — Fikr-e-Jameel, his ghazals, and Naqsh-e-Jameel, his nazms — stand beside his long poem Masnavi Ab-o-Sarab and his much-loved prose work Farz Ki Qurban-Gah Par. His verse ranges from love and the beloved's eyes to the lamps of Diwali, the colours of Holi, and a song for the motherland, Ae Madar-e-Hindustan; he studied the Sufi mystics and the Bhakti saints, and his poetry carries the old and the new together in one voice. His work was honoured with the Ghalib Modi Award in 1974. He died at Patna on 23 July 1979, aged 74.

Jameeluddin Aali (20 January 1925 – 23 November 2015) was a poet, institution-builder and public voice of Pakistan — the man who gave the nation its most sung anthem of itself and revived the doha in Urdu. Son of Nawab Sir Amiruddin Ahmed Khan of Loharu, himself a poet, and Syeda Jamila Begum, from Khwaja Mir Dard's family — his paternal grandfather was a disciple and friend of Ghalib — he took a BA in Economics from Anglo Arabic College, Delhi (1944), and migrated to Karachi on 13 August 1947. He passed the CSS examination in 1951, joined the Pakistan Taxation Service and rose to income-tax commissioner, served as Officer on Special Duty at President House (1959–1963), joined the National Bank of Pakistan in 1967 and retired as vice-president in 1988, and took an LLB/FEL from the University of Karachi (1971). Alongside that career he co-founded the Pakistan Writers' Guild, served as honorary secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu Pakistan for decades, chaired the Urdu Dictionary Board, and wrote a newspaper column for some fifty years. His long poem Insaan runs to some 4,000 verses; his travelogues are Duniya Mere Aage and Tamasha Mere Aage; his collections include Ghazlein Dohey Geet, La Hasil, Goshai-e-Bisaat, Harf-e-Chand and Aye Mere Dasht-e-Sukhan. He revived the doha in Urdu, wrote the milli naghma "Jeevay Jeevay Pakistan" (named here, never quoted), and received the Pride of Performance (1991), Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2004) and Kamal-e-Fun (2006). He served as a Senator from 1997 to 2003.

Jan Nisar Akhtar (18 February 1914 – August 1976) was a Progressive poet who carried Urdu verse from the mushaira into the cinema hall. Son of the poet Muztar Khairabadi and great-grandson of Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, he took a BA (Hons) and MA in Urdu from Aligarh Muslim University, lectured at Victoria College, Gwalior (1940), and became Professor of Urdu at Hamidia College, Bhopal. A member of the Progressive Writers' Movement, he moved to Bombay in 1949 and became a Bollywood lyricist, writing 151 songs — among them Yasmin (1955), "Aankhon Hi Aankhon Mein" in CID (1956), Prem Parbat (1974), Noorie (1979) and "Ae Dil-e-Naadaan" in Razia Sultan (1983). His poetry collections include Nazr-e-Butaan, Salaasil, Javidaan, Pichali Pehar, Ghar Angan and Khaak-e-Dil, which won the 1976 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu. His style is romantic and revolutionary at once, in simple but eloquent language with extensive Hindi words. He was the father of the lyricist Javed Akhtar and the psychoanalyst Salman Akhtar.

Karachi's poet-critic — pray for rain, but look at your own broken house first. Jazib Qureshi (1940–2021), born on 3 August 1940 in Lucknow, was a Pakistani Urdu poet, writer and critic whose work spanned more than fifty years. His father died when he was six, and the family moved to Lahore in 1950, where the young Jazib worked in the press and began to write poetry, guided by Shakir Dehlavi of the Dagh school. His first public reading was at the Shahi Qila, in a gathering chaired by Ehsan Danish. In 1962 he moved to Karachi, worked in magazines and newspapers, took a master's degree from the University of Karachi, and taught in government schools and colleges for thirty-five years. Eight collections of his poetry appeared, along with half a dozen books of criticism — among them Pehchaan, Shinasai and Takhleeqi Awaaz — and an autobiography; his studies of Ghalib, Iqbal and other masters were widely read, and younger writers admired him as a critic who wrote about the living. He travelled widely to read his poetry, visiting thirty-five cities in the United States and returning often to the Gulf. He died in Karachi on 21 June 2021, aged 80, and is buried in the Azizabad graveyard.

Ali Sikandar (1890–1960), known by his takhallus **Jigar Moradabadi**, was one of the great Urdu ghazal poets of the twentieth century. Born in Moradabad, he lost his father at an early age, received an oriental education in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and briefly worked as a travelling salesman. Still in his teens he moved to Gonda, near Lucknow, where he befriended the poet Asghar Gondvi and made the town his permanent home. His first lessons in poetry came from his father Ali Nazar, a poet himself; he later sought guidance from Dagh Dehlavi. An iconic mushaira poet famed for musical, romantic verse on love and wine, he published *Daagh-e-Jigar* (1928), *Shola-e-Toor* (1932) and *Aatish-e-Gul* (1954), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958. He was the second poet after Muhammad Iqbal to receive an honorary D.Litt. from Aligarh Muslim University, and a mentor to Majrooh Sultanpuri. He is known as *Rais-ul-Mutaghazzileen* — the prince of ghazal writers.

The progressive poet who carried Urdu into Hindi cinema — from "Kar chale hum fida" to "Waqt ne kiya". Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi (1919–2002), takhallus Kaifi — "Azmi" from his Azamgarh roots — was born on 14 January 1919 in Mijwan, Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, and died in Mumbai on 10 May 2002. At eleven he composed his first ghazal ("Itna to zindagi mein kisi ke khalal paDe") and recited it at a mushaira — his father had to be convinced the verse was truly the boy's own. The Quit India agitation of 1942 ended his formal studies of Persian and Urdu; in 1943 he joined the Communist Party of India as a full-time worker and became a leading voice of the Progressive Writers' Movement, writing for the party paper *Qaumi Jung* in Bombay alongside Ali Sardar Jafri. His first collection, *Jhankar* (1943), was followed by *Aakhir-e-Shab*, *Sarmaya*, and the celebrated *Awaara Sajde*, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award (1975); he also received the Padma Shri (1974) and the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (2002). As Hindi cinema's lyricist he is remembered for *Kaagaz Ke Phool* (1959), *Haqeeqat* (1964), and the all-verse dialogue of *Heer Raanjha* (1970); his story and dialogues for *Garam Hawa* (1973) won three Filmfare awards. His nazms — "Aurat", "Makaan", "Daaera" — gave progressive thought its most humane Urdu voice.

Kaleem Aajiz (birth year unknown–2015) was an Indian Urdu poet from Telhara in Bihar, widely regarded as a classical poet in the tradition of Mir Taqi Mir. A gold medallist in B.A. from Patna College, he took his M.A. in Urdu and his PhD (1965) from Patna University, where he then lectured in Urdu for decades and later chaired the Urdu Advisory Committee of the Government of Bihar. His first book of ghazals was released in 1976 by the President of India, and in the 1960s and 1970s he was the only Urdu poet representing Bihar at the annual Red Fort mushaira. His books include Woh Jo Shairi Ka Sabab Hua, written in the wake of Partition violence that took members of his family, and Jahan Khushboo Hi Khushboo Thi. He received the Padma Shri in 1989 and the Ghalib Award, and died on 14 February 2015 at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.

Khalid Ahmad (1943–2013) was a Pakistani Urdu poet, playwright and columnist who gave the ghazal new progressive trends. Born on 5 June 1943 in Lucknow, the son of writer and politician Mohammad Mustafa Khan 'Maddah' and brother of the celebrated fiction writers Khadija Mastoor and Hajira Masroor, he migrated to Pakistan after Partition and took an MSc in Physics from Government College, Lahore. He worked as an information officer at WAPDA, retiring as Deputy Controller, while writing the column 'Lamha-Lamha' for the Daily Imroz and later for Jang and Nawa-i-Waqt, plays for Pakistan Television — Kajal Ghar, Kiran and Ghubar — and editing the monthly literary magazine Bayaz for twenty-two years. His books include Daraz Palkon ke Saaye Saaye, Ek Mutthi Hawa, Pehli Sada Parinde Ki and Hatheliyon par Charagh. He received the Pride of Performance in 2011 and died in Lahore on 19 March 2013.

Khalil-ur-Rehman Azmi was an Indian Urdu poet and literary critic, and one of the founding fathers of modern Urdu criticism in the subcontinent. Born on 9 August 1927 at Sedhan Sultanpur in Azamgarh district, to Maulana Muhammad Shafi, founder of Madarsatul Islah, he was educated at Aligarh Muslim University, where he stood first-class first in his M.A. in Urdu (1950), tutored the young British Urdu scholar Ralph Russell, and took his Ph.D. in 1957 on the Progressive literary movement in Urdu. He joined Aligarh's Urdu department as lecturer in 1952, became Reader in 1966, and was posthumously elevated to Professor. Imprisoned in 1949 for his political views, he remained aligned with the Progressive Writers' Movement while pioneering modernism in Urdu poetry. His collections include Kaghzi Pairahan (1953) and Naya Ahad Nama (1965), whose title nazm 'Khwabon se dar lagta hai' is among his best-known poems; Zindagi Ae Zindagi appeared posthumously in 1983. He died of leukaemia at Aligarh on 1 June 1978, the year he received the Ghalib Award for Urdu Poetry.

Khumar Barabankvi (1919–1999), born Mohammad Haider Khan on 15 September 1919 at Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, was the classical ghazal's great mushaira voice — a poet whose singing delivery made him, with Jigar Moradabadi, a guarantee of any mushaira's success. He grew up in a house of poets: his father Dr Ghulam Haider wrote salaams and marsiyas as "Bahar", and his uncle Qaraar Barabankvi corrected his early verse. After high school at Government College, Barabanki, he left intermediate studies at Lucknow for poetry, and chose the classical ghazal as his lifelong service — "after analyzing all the genres of speech, I found the classical ghazal to be the most suitable," he wrote. In 1945 he came to Bombay with Jigar and Majrooh Sultanpuri for a mushaira; A. R. Kardar heard him and asked for a song for Shah Jahan, sung by K. L. Saigal — the start of a film career that included Saaz aur Awaaz and K. Asif's Love and God, though he soon grew dismayed at falling film standards and returned to the ghazal. His collections Aatish-e-Tar, Raqs-e-Mai and Shab-e-Taab carry the voice his audiences knew: gentle, musical, steeped in love and longing, and later, after he gave up drinking, in a deeper tenderness. He died on 19 February 1999 and lies at Karbala Civil Lines, Barabanki, where the Khumar Memorial Academy keeps his name.

Khwaja Aziz-ul-Hasan Ghori "Majzoob" (1884–1944), born 12 June 1884 at Orai in Jhelum district, U.P., was a Sufi poet of the Chishti-Sabiri tradition and an authorized disciple and khalifa of Ashraf Ali Thanvi. He first wrote under the takhallus "Hasan"; after coming under Thanvi's influence he became "Majzoob" — the absorbed one. Educated at Aligarh (B.A., LL.B.), he served first in the excise department and then seven years as deputy collector; finding the post against his temperament, he took a lower salary in the education department, where he served as deputy inspector of Islamic makatib and then Inspector of Schools (U.P.), retiring on pension. He had no ustad in poetry; his kalam — hamd, munajat, na'at, marsiya, ghazal, nazm — is suffused with spirituality and gnosis (irfan). Nearly two hundred khulafa of Thanvi recited his mystical verse with devotion, and it remains beloved in the Thanvi silsila to this day. Per his will his kalam was first published as Kalam-e-Majzoob and then continuously as Kashkol-e-Majzoob. In prose he compiled Ashraf-us-Sawaneh (4 volumes, 1935–1943), the first and most authoritative biography of his master. He died at Orai on 17 August 1944.

Kunwar Mohinder Singh Bedi 'Sahar' (1909–1992), born at Chak Bedi in Montgomery District, Punjab, was an Urdu poet whose pen name meant "daybreak" — and whose verse lived up to it. Born into a Bedi zamindar family tracing its line to Guru Nanak, he fell in love with Urdu in school and began writing ghazals while studying at Lahore. He joined the Indian Administrative Service, served as City Magistrate of Delhi, and worked alongside Nehru and Patel to restrain violence and resettle refugees after Partition — the same Partition that uprooted his own family to Fazilka. His poetry is traditional in form and humane in temper: love and yearning beside unity, peace between India and Pakistan, and a gentle humour. Khushwant Singh called him "the stoutest bridge between India and Pakistan". His first collection, *Tulu-e-Sahar* (1962), played on his own name — the advent of daybreak — and his autobiographical poems *Yadon Ka Jashn* (1983) remain a document of Punjab before and after Partition. Jagjit Singh sang eight of his ghazals on the album *Forget Me Not*. He died on 18 July 1992.

Maharaja Sir Kishan Prasad Shad (1864 – 13 May 1940) of Hyderabad was a poet first and a prime minister second — or, as Hyderabad liked to say, a poet who happened to rule. A childhood friend of Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan and heir to a family that traced itself to Raja Todar Mal, he became Peshkar of Hyderabad State in 1892 and its Dewan (Prime Minister) in 1901, taking the title Yamin-us-Saltanat, "right hand of the realm", and the rank of Maharaja. In his first tenure he raised the state's revenues, organised relief after the great Musi Flood of 1908, and left the treasury fuller than he found it; after resigning in 1912 he was called back by Nizam Osman Ali Khan in November 1926 and served until March 1937, passing the Mulki regulations that reserved posts for Hyderabad's own people. He was knighted KCIE in 1903 and GCIE in 1910. Through all of it he remained a disciple of Dagh Dehlvi, writing Urdu and Persian poetry under the takhallus "Shad" — happy — in a Sufi key: ghazal, naat and marsiya, collected in Bagh-e-Shad (1890) and later volumes, and shared in his own magazine Mahbub al-Kalam. His house was a morning court of poets, painters and musicians from across India, Persia and Arabia, and his life — seven wives, Hindu and Muslim, each following her own faith — was itself an argument for the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb he championed. At his death in Hyderabad on 13 May 1940, the Nizam said society had witnessed "the departure of the last vestige of the Mughal Empire".

Majeed Amjad (1914–1974) was a Pakistani modern Urdu poet, counted among the founding fathers of modern Urdu poetry and described as a philosophical poet of depth and sensitivity. Born Abdul Majid on 29 June 1914 in Jhang, Punjab, he was taught Arabic and Persian by his maternal grandfather, took his bachelor's degree from Islamia College Lahore in 1934, and edited the weekly Arooj in Jhang. He then served in the Food Department, spending the last twenty-eight years of his life in Sahiwal, where he retired as Assistant Food Controller in 1972 and died on 11 May 1974; he was buried in Jhang. His first collection, Shab-e-Rafta (1958), with a preface in verse, was the only book published in his lifetime; Shab-e-Rafta Ke Baad followed posthumously in 1976, and his complete works, Kuliyat-e-Majeed Amjad, were edited by Khawaja Muhammad Zakariya in 1989. Away from the great literary centres, he built a poetry of striking images and unexpected connections — philosophical, introspective, and deeply personal, in ghazal, nazm and free verse.

Majrooh Sultanpuri (1919–2000), born Asrar ul Hassan Khan in Sultanpur, U.P., was a Progressive Urdu poet and one of Hindi cinema's most celebrated lyricists. A trained Unani physician (Hakim) and disciple of Jigar Moradabadi, he left medicine for poetry, joined films in 1946 with Shahjahan ("Jab dil hi toot gaya"), and served two years in prison in 1949 for his leftist verse. Across six decades he wrote more than two thousand film lyrics — from Andaz and Dosti ("Chahunga main tujhe sanjh savere", Filmfare Best Lyricist 1965) to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar ("Pehla nasha") — while his fifty-odd ghazals and two notable nazms carried the Progressive fire; none is more famous than "main akela hi chala tha jaanib-e-manzil magar", which Wikipedia's own article calls one of the best-known verses of Urdu poetry. He became the first lyricist to receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1993), and also received the Ghalib Prize and the Iqbal Samman. He died in Mumbai on 24 May 2000.

Makhdoom Mohiuddin (1908–1969), born Abu Sayed Muhammad Makhdoom Mohiuddin in Andole village, Medak district, Hyderabad State, was the revolutionary Urdu poet known as "Shayar-e-Inquilab" (Poet of the Revolution). He founded the Progressive Writers Union in Hyderabad, taught Urdu literature at City College (1934), joined the Communist Party of India, and stood at the forefront of the 1946–47 Telangana Rebellion against the Nizam; he later became a founder of the CPI in Andhra Pradesh, a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council (1956–1969) and its opposition leader. His collections *Surkh Savera* (1944) and *Gul-e-Tar* (1961) were gathered with the rest of his verse in *Bisat-e-Raqs*, which won the 1969 Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu. His ghazals — "Aap Ki Yaad Aati Rahi Raat Bhar," "Phir Chhidi Raat, Baat Phoolon Ki," "Ek Chameli Ke Mandve Taley" — became immortal through Hindi films. He died in Hyderabad on 25 August 1969.

Tonk's wandering bird — he still believes the promise, though he has tested it a thousand times. Makhmoor Saeedi (1938–2010), born Sultan Mohammad Khan on 31 December 1938 at Tonk in Rajasthan, was an Indian Urdu poet, critic, translator and journalist, and one of the finest modern voices to come out of Tonk. His father, Ahmed Khan Nazish, was himself a noted Urdu poet. Schooled at Tonk and then at Agra, he moved to Delhi after graduation and gave his life to Urdu letters — writing ghazals and nazms, rubai, qataa, doha and geet, and working in criticism, journalism and translation, including a verse rendering of the Bhagavad Gita into Urdu. His poetry collections include Sabrang, Siyah bar Safed, Awaaz ka Jism (1972), Guftani, Baans ke Jangalon se Guzarti Hawa (1983), Diwaar-o-Dar ke Darmiyan (1994), Umr-e-Guzishta ka Hisab in two volumes, and Raasta aur Main (2003). He was long associated with the Delhi magazine Tahrik, and his work won the Sahitya Akademi Award. He died on 2 March 2010 at Jaipur, aged 71, and was buried at Tonk.

Maulvi Abdul Haq (1870–1961), remembered as Baba-e-Urdu, the Father of Urdu, gave his whole life to the language — its words, its grammar, its history and its honour. Born on 20 April 1870 at Hapur, he was educated in the Punjab and at Aligarh, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1894, and fell under the influence of Sir Syed, Shibli and Hali. In 1895 he went to Hyderabad, where he taught, edited journals, headed the institute that translated history, science and philosophy into Urdu, and became the first head of the Urdu department at Osmania University. In 1912 he became general secretary of the Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu, the society for the progress of Urdu, and held that post until Partition. He edited the journal Urdu for more than three decades, gathered old manuscripts that rewrote the early history of the language, and produced some fifty volumes — among them his Standard English-Urdu Dictionary and his Urdu grammar — while pressing, all his life, for Urdu to be given its rightful place in public life. After migrating to Pakistan in 1948, he rebuilt the Anjuman in Karachi, founded the Urdu College there, and worked on until illness overtook him. He died at Karachi on 16 August 1961, leaving the language he had served with a dictionary, a grammar, a history — and a father's name.

Delhi's deputy who taught a nation to read — the pioneer of the Urdu novel. Maulvi Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi (1830–1912), known as Deputy Nazir Ahmad, was the pioneer of the Urdu novel — a novelist, reformer, scholar and translator. Born at Rehar in the Bijnor district in 1830, to a family of scholars, he was taught Persian and Arabic by his father, a teacher, and in 1842 was sent to study in Delhi, entering Delhi College in 1846. He began as a teacher of Arabic, became a deputy inspector of schools in 1856, and rose to deputy collector in the North-Western Provinces — the post that gave him his familiar name. His novel Mirat-ul-Uroos (1869), the story of two sisters, Asghari and Akbari, written for the education of girls, established the Urdu novel and has never been out of print; Banat-un-Nash, Taubat-un-Nasuh (1873), Fasana-e-Mubtala (1885), Ibn-ul-Waqt (1888) and Ruya-e-Sadiqa followed. A friend and sometime critic of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement, he wrote more than thirty books, translated the Quran into Urdu, and put the Indian Penal Code into Urdu as Taazirat-e-Hind. He died of a stroke at Delhi on 3 May 1912.

The bohemian who freed the Urdu nazm — symbolism, free verse, and Hindu myth in a life lived by the tavern's edge. Meeraji (1912–1949), born Muhammad Sanaullah Dar into a Kashmiri family of Gujranwala, was one of the founding fathers of the modern Urdu nazm — the pioneer who carried symbolism and free verse into Urdu poetry. Raised in Lahore, he first wrote under the takhallus "Sasri"; a one-sided love for a Bengali girl, Meera Sen, gave him the pen name by which he is remembered. Though brought up in comfort — his father Munshi Mohammad Mahtabuddin was a railway engineer — he left home and family to live as a bohemian wanderer, staying with friends and making a living by selling his songs. He served as poetry editor of the Lahore magazine *Adabi Duniya* (1938), worked for All India Radio in Delhi, wrote literary columns for the monthly *Saqi*, and briefly helped edit *Khayal* in Bombay, settling in Bombay after Partition. Drawn from his teens to Hindu mythology, he wove Hindi vocabulary into his poetry, prose, and letters; he acknowledged his debts to the Sanskrit poet Amaru and the French Baudelaire, and translated Damodar Gupta and Omar Khayyam. His collections include *Meeraji ke Geet*, *Meeraji ki Nazmein*, *Geet hi Geet*, *Paband Nazmein*, and *Teen Rang*; the *Kulliyat-e-Meeraji* appeared in 1988. He died in Bombay in November 1949, aged only thirty-seven.

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa (1857–1931), born in Lucknow in the year of the great uprising, was the Urdu novelist who gave the language its first great novel — and a poet in his own right. His ancestors had come from Persia; his great-grandfather was an adjutant in the Nawab of Awadh's army, and the family lane in Lucknow was still called Adjutant's Lane. Educated at Thomson Engineering School (Thomason College, Roorkee), he taught at Lucknow's Central High School and Christian College, worked as a civil servant and railwayman, and later moved to Hyderabad to work at the Dar-ut-Tarjuma, Osmania University's translation bureau. He knew Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, English, Latin and Greek, wrote on religion, philosophy and astronomy, and even invented a system of Urdu shorthand. His literary career began in 1887 with a verse Laila-Majnu; then came the novels — Afshai Raz, Zaat-e-Shareef, Shareef Zada, Akhtari Begum — and, above all, Umrao Jan Ada (first published Lucknow, 1899; often cited as 1905), the courtesan-poet's life story told as memoir, regarded by many as the first Urdu novel and later filmed in Pakistan and India. His ghazals — 31 sher catalogued on Rekhta — carry the same world as the novel: two ruined cities, a lifetime's weariness, love as affliction. He died at Hyderabad on 21 October 1931.

Mohammad Ali Jauhar (1878–1931) was an Indian Muslim leader, journalist, scholar and Urdu poet, a leading figure of the Khilafat Movement. Born on 10 December 1878 at Rampur, he studied at Aligarh and at Lincoln College, Oxford, then served the Rampur state and the Baroda civil service before turning to journalism — founding the English weekly The Comrade in 1911 and the Urdu daily Hamdard in 1913. He co-founded the All-India Muslim League and Jamia Millia Islamia, led the Khilafat delegation to Europe in 1920, was imprisoned for sedition, and presided over the Indian National Congress in 1923. His Urdu poetry, collected in Deewan-e-Jauhar, carries the same fire as his politics: faith, sacrifice and resistance — above all his Karbala couplet, "the killing of Husain was in truth the death of Yazid", quoted for decades. He died of a stroke in London on 4 January 1931, days after the first Round Table Conference, and was buried in Jerusalem as he had wished.

Mohammad Alvi (1927–2018) was one of the most prominent modernist poets of Urdu, praised for his "layered simplicity" — short, plain lines that carry a philosophical weight. Born on 10 April 1927 at Ahmedabad, he had little formal schooling in his youth and completed his higher education at Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. He began writing as a progressive poet in the late 1940s, but found his own voice in the late 1950s, when he turned to modern Urdu poetry. His collections — *Khali Makaan* (1963), *Aakhiri Din Ki Talash* (1968), *Teesri Kitab* (1978), *Chautha Aasmaan* (1992) and *Raat Idhar Udhar Roshan* (1995) — made him one of the most-read modern ghazal writers; *Chautha Aasmaan* won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, and he also received the Ghalib Award. He died at Ahmedabad on 29 January 2018, aged 90.

Mohsin Naqvi (1947–1996), born Syed Ghulam Abbas Naqvi in 1947 at the village of Sadat near Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab, was the voice in which modern Urdu grief learned to speak plainly — and the poet Pakistan calls the "Shayar-e-Ahl-e-Bayt". His father, Syed Chirag Hussain Shah, was a saddlemaker and food vendor; Mohsin graduated from Government College, Bosan Road, Multan, and took his master's degree from the University of the Punjab, Lahore, where he was already known by his pen name. His ghazals — collected in Azaab-e-Deed, Khaima-e-Jaan, Barg-e-Sehra, Band-e-Qaba and others — move between romantic longing and Karbala: love's separation and Husain's grief are, in his verse, two faces of one devotion, which is why his lines are recited as readily in majalis as in mushairas. He wrote with a direct, unadorned diction that made him beloved far beyond literary circles, and he did not spare the rulers of his day. On 15 January 1996 he was assassinated in Lahore, near Moon Market; he was buried at Dera Ghazi Khan, mourned by thousands.

Moin Ahsan Jazbi was an Indian Urdu poet and a major voice of the Progressive Writers' Movement who struck a different chord with it — representing the classical literary tradition and blending it with contemporary poetics. Born on 21 August 1912 at Mubarakpur in Azamgarh district, he began composing poetry at the age of nine, sought guidance from Hamid Shahjehanpuri, and first used the takhallus Malaal before becoming Jazbi. He took his B.A. from Anglo-Arabic College, Delhi (1932), his M.A. in Urdu from Aligarh Muslim University (1934), and his Ph.D. in 1938 on Hali's political consciousness, published as Hali Ka Siyasi Shuoor (1959). After working as assistant editor of the Urdu monthly Aajkal, he joined Aligarh's Urdu department in 1945 and retired as Reader in 1974. His collections are Firozaan (1951), Sukhan-e-Mukhtasar (1960) and Gudaaz-e-Shab (1985); his ghazal 'Marne ki duaen kyun maangun…' became widely sung. He received the Ghalib Award in 1975 and died on 13 February 2005.

Muhammad Abdul-Hayy Siddiqui, known as Bekhud Badayuni (17 September 1857 – 10 November 1912), was a leading late-19th- and early-20th-century poet of Badayun, from a prominent Siddiqui family of Islamic scholarship, Sufism and literature, claiming descent from Abu Bakr. Trained as a lawyer — he practised in Moradabad and Shahjahanpur — he later became a high official in the states of Sirohi and Jodhpur. His poetic masters mark his place in the tradition: he was first a disciple of Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, Ghalib's protégé, who gave him the pen name Bekhud; around 1879, as Hali turned away from traditional forms, he left Hali and became a disciple of Nawab Mirza Khan Daagh Dehlvi. He stayed aloof from the squabble over Daagh's successor, though Daagh is reported to have answered "Bekhud-ain" — the two Bekhuds — when asked: Badayuni and Dehlvi. He published late: his diwan appeared only in 1910, two years before his death, partly to combat the plagiarism and misattribution of verse that had circulated orally for decades — the very confusion that still mixes his work with Bekhud Dehlvi's. His books include Hosh-o-Khirad ki Dukaan (1889), Sabr-o-Shakeeb ki Loot (1889), Marraat-ul-Khayal — Mirror of Thoughts — (1910) and Afsaanah-e-Bekhud. His subjects are love, philosophy, mysticism and Islam.

Muhammad Husain Azad (1830–1910), born in Delhi on 5 May 1830 into a Persian immigrant family, was the stylist who remade Urdu prose and the critic who wrote its first great literary history. His mother died when he was four; his father, Maulvi Muhammad Baqir, educated at Delhi College, bought a press in 1837 and launched the Delhi Urdu Akhbar — probably the first Urdu newspaper in northern India. Azad graduated from Delhi College in 1854 and joined his father's paper — until 1857, when the paper's support for the uprising cost his father his life: Baqir was executed by the British, and the whole joint family was thrown out of its house. After years of hardship and hiding, Azad migrated to Lahore in 1861, worked at the General Post Office and the Director of Public Instruction's office, and found his place when the Anjuman-e-Punjab was founded: lecturer in 1866, its secretary in 1867, then professor of Urdu and Persian at Government College, Lahore. In 1887 he founded the Azad Library and received the title Shams-ul-Ulama, Sun among the Learned. His Aab-e-Hayat (1880) — lives of Urdu poets and the story of the language itself — remains the foundation stone of Urdu literary history; around it stand Qisas-ul-Hind, Nairang-e-Khiyal, Sukhandan-e-Fars and Darbar-e-Akbari. As a poet he was the pioneer of the new natural nazm, writing on nature and everyday subjects instead of only rose and nightingale, beginning with "Shab-e-Qadr." He died at Lahore on 22 January 1910.

Munawwar Rana was an Indian Urdu poet who brought the mother into the centre of the ghazal, a form long reserved for the beloved. Born in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, and long associated with Kolkata and later Lucknow, he wrote in plain Hindi-Urdu mixed with Awadhi, deliberately avoiding heavy Persian and Arabic vocabulary so ordinary listeners could follow him at mushairas. His best-known work, Maa, and collections including Shahdaba, for which he won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2014, celebrate mothers, daughters, labourers, migrants and home. He returned the Akademi award in 2015 in protest against rising intolerance. He died in Lucknow on 14 January 2024, aged 71.

Munir Niazi (1923–2006), born Munir Ahmad at Khanpur, Hoshiarpur district, Punjab (British India), was one of the most distinctive voices of modern Urdu and Punjabi poetry. His early schooling was at Khanpur; after Partition in 1947 his family migrated to Sahiwal, where he passed his matriculation and met the noted poet Majeed Amjad, who became his mentor and friend. He earned an intermediate degree from Sadiq Egerton College, Bahawalpur, and a B.A. from Dayal Singh College, Lahore. In 1949 he launched the weekly Seven Colours from Sahiwal; in 1960 he established the publication institute Al-Misal; he was later associated with Pakistan Television, Lahore. In the 1960s his film songs became super-hits — "Us bewafa ka shehr hai aur hum hain dosto" (Shaheed, 1962) made him one of the foremost movie songwriters of Pakistan. He published thirteen Urdu collections — including Taiz Hawa Aur Tanha Phool, Jungle Mein Dhanak, Dushmanon Ke Darmiyan Shaam and Mah-e-Munir — and three in Punjabi: Safar di Raat, Char Chup Cheezan and Rasta Dassan Walay Tarey. He experimented with poetic forms, forging a new imagery, rhythm and diction; innocence, mythology, nostalgia, dreams, melancholy and romance run through his work. He received the Pride of Performance (1992), the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, and the Pakistan Academy of Letters' Kamal-e-Funn Award (2002). He died of respiratory illness in Lahore on 26 December 2006 and rests in Model Town graveyard.

Mustafa Zaidi (died 12 October 1970) was a Progressive Urdu poet whose life ended as mysteriously as some of his verse. Born in Allahabad — his birth year is disputed, 1929 against 1930, and is recorded here as Unknown — he was educated there (Modern High School; Ewing Christian College; BA, University of Allahabad, first class), migrated to Pakistan in 1951, and took an MA in English Literature from Government College Lahore (1953). He joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1954, served as deputy commissioner and deputy secretary, and was dismissed in June 1970 with 38 other CSP officers under Yahya Khan. He married Vera Zaidi, a German national, and had a son and a daughter. His first book, *Zanjeeren / Roshni*, published when he was 19, was endorsed by Josh Malihabadi and Firaq Gorakhpuri; later books include *Shehr-e-Azar, Qaba-e-Saz, Mauj Meri Sadaf Sadaf, Koh-e-Nida* and *Gareban*, and he received the Tamgha-e-Quaid-e-Azam. His style is poignant, modern and socially aware. On 12 October 1970 he was found dead in Karachi in circumstances never settled — suicide or murder — and lies in Karachi's Wadi-e-Hussain cemetery.

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.

Nasreen Anjum Bhatti (birth year unknown–2016) was a Pakistani poet, painter, broadcaster and rights activist, born in Quetta and raised in Jacobabad, Sindh. She took her M.A. in Urdu from Oriental College, Lahore, in 1970 and joined Radio Pakistan in 1971, where she served as producer, broadcaster and deputy controller, later becoming resident director of the Shakir Ali Museum in Lahore. Writing in both Punjabi and Urdu, she was a feminist voice of resistance — against General Zia's martial law and against patriarchy. Her first Punjabi collection, *Neel Karaiyan Neelkan* (1979), contains the long poem "Bhutto di Vaar" on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's hanging; *Athay Pehr Tarah* (2009) followed, with the Urdu collections *Bin Bass* and *Tera Lehja Badalne Tak*. She received the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz in 2011 and died of cancer in Karachi in January 2016.

Nazar Muhammad Rashid, known as Noon Meem Rashid (1 August 1910 – 9 October 1975), was the pioneer of free verse in Urdu and, with Miraji, is regarded as a father of modern Urdu poetry; Faiz Ahmed Faiz called him *Malik-ush-Shoara*, King of Poets. Son of Raja Fazal Ilahi Chishti, a District Inspector of Schools and lover of Ghalib, he took an MA in Economics from Government College Lahore. His first poem, *Jurrat-e-Parwaz*, appeared in 1932, and his first free-verse book, *Mavra* (1940/41), broke Urdu poetry open. He served as a captain in the Royal Indian Army in the Second World War, then worked for All India Radio and Radio Pakistan, Voice of America, and the United Nations in New York, Jakarta, Karachi and Tehran. His collections include *Mavra*, *Iran Mein Ajnabi* (1955), *La-Insan* (1969) and the posthumous *Gumaan Ka Mumkin* (1977). His style is intellectual, philosophical and cosmic — poetry of thought and of the "new man" (*Adam-e-Nau*), breaking religious, geographical and linguistic boundaries; deliberately difficult — a poet of qualities, not of the people.

Banaras's own voice — the Unani physician who wrote the nation's unity into nazm and ghazal. Nazeer Banarasi (1909–1996), born Nazeer Ahmad on 25 November 1909 at Banaras, was an Indian Urdu poet of nazm and ghazal, and a Unani physician by profession. His father was a well-known practitioner of Unani medicine in Banaras, and Nazeer joined his father's profession, serving his city with both medicine and poetry all his life — he never moved to Delhi or Mumbai to chase fame. He chose his material from the life around him, and his poetry became a living record of his times: he wrote for Hindu-Muslim understanding and Indian nationalism, and composed long poems on the leading literary, social and political figures of his day. His collections include Gang-o-Jaman, Rashtra ki Amanat Rashtra ke Hawale, Jawahar se Lal Tak, Ghulami se Azaadi Tak and Kitab-e-Ghazal. He died on 23 March 1996 at Banaras, aged 86.