Poets Directory (شعرائے کرام)

Abdul Majeed Salik (1894–1959) was a prominent Urdu poet, journalist and essayist of early-twentieth-century Punjab. Born on 13 December 1894 at Batalah in district Gurdaspur, he began writing poetry at fourteen and became one of the leading editors of his day — of the newspaper Zamindar and the magazines Tahzeeb-e-Niswan and Phool. His first poetic collection, Raah-o-Rasm-e-Manzilha, appeared in 1922, and his patriotic nazms stirred the readers of the freedom era. He was also a scholar of Persian and a biographer of lasting standing: his Zikr-e-Iqbal remains a celebrated life of Iqbal, and his Muslim Sahafat Hindustan Mein is a history of Muslim journalism in India. He died in Lahore on 27 September 1959.

Abid Ali Abid (1906–1971) was a Pakistani Urdu and Persian poet, critic and educator — a critic first and a poet second, by his own field's judgement. Born on 17 September 1906 at Dera Ismail Khan, he graduated in law and joined the bar, but his literary inclination brought him to Lahore, where he took an M.A. in Persian and taught Persian at Dayal Singh College. He wrote books of literary criticism in Urdu and Persian — Usool-e-Inteqaad, Adab Ke Asloob, Al-Bayan and Al-Badi among them — and edited literary journals including Sahifa-Lahore. He was among the first drama and feature writers at Radio Pakistan Lahore in the late 1940s and 1950s, and had worked on the story and dialogue of Heer Ranjha (1931), the first Punjabi talking film. His poetry collection Main Kabhi Ghazal Na Kehta and his fiction Talismaat and Shahbaz Khan stand beside the criticism, but it was the criticism that earned him his place of distinction. His daughter Shabnam Shakeel became a noted poet in her own right. He survived three heart attacks and succumbed to the fourth, dying in Lahore on 20 January 1971, aged 64.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958), scholar, journalist and statesman, was born on 11 November 1888 at Mecca, where his father, the scholar Muhammad Khairuddin, had settled after leaving India in the wake of 1857. The family returned to Calcutta in 1890, and the boy was taught at home by his father, mastering Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and writing from his teens. In 1912, at twenty-three, he founded the Urdu weekly Al-Hilal, whose fearless journalism the British shut down within two years. He rose in the Congress, presiding over it in 1923 and again from 1940 to 1946, and spent years in prison for the freedom struggle, writing the letters from Ahmednagar Fort that became Ghubar-e-Khatir. His great works — the Quranic commentary Tarjuman-ul-Quran, the memoir Tazkira, and the letters — sit beside a small body of early verse, written under the pen-name Azad. When India became free, he became its first Minister of Education, holding the office from 1947 until his death, and laid the foundations of the country's modern learning: the University Grants Commission, the institutes of technology, and the national academies of letters, music, dance and art. He died of a stroke at Delhi on 22 February 1958 and lies buried within the Jama Masjid. His birthday, 11 November, is observed across India as National Education Day, and the Bharat Ratna was conferred on him posthumously in 1992.

"The First Lady of Urdu Poetry" — the first prominent woman poet of the progressive era. Ada Jafri (1924–2015), born Aziz Jahan in Badayun, was the first prominent woman poet of the progressive era — honoured as "The First Lady of Urdu Poetry". Her father died when she was three; raised in a traditional household, she began composing verse at twelve under the name Ada Badayuni, and received guidance from poets including Akhtar Sheerani, who printed her first ghazal in his journal *Rooman*. She married the civil servant and littérateur Nurul Hasan Jafri in Lucknow in January 1947, taking the name Ada Jafarey, and moved with him to Karachi after Partition. Her first collection, *Main Saz Dhoondhti Rahi* (1950), announced a woman's voice writing the ghazal in the romanticist tradition with remarkable confidence; *Shahr-i Dard* (1967) won the Adamjee Literary Award. Later collections, an autobiography (*Jo Rahi So Bekhabari Rahi*), Urdu haiku, and her edited anthology *Ghazal Numa* followed. Pakistan honoured her with the Medal of Excellence (1981), the Pride of Performance (2003), and the Kamal-e-Fun lifetime award (2003) — the first woman to receive it. She died in Karachi on 12 March 2015.

Adil Mansuri (1936–2008) was an Indian modernist poet, calligrapher, painter and playwright, born in Ahmedabad on 18 May 1936 as Farid Mohammad. He spoke Gujarati at home and was educated in Arabic and Urdu; after Partition his family moved to Karachi, where he began writing Urdu ghazals and learning calligraphy, returning to Ahmedabad in 1955. He became a leading modernist who experimented with form and language together, writing ghazals in Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu, and is credited with developing the modern Gujarati ghazal. His Urdu collection *Hashr ki Subh Darakhshan Ho* carries his socio-political consciousness alongside Islamic tradition. He immigrated to New Jersey, USA, in 1985, where he continued to write, paint and practise calligraphy until his death on 6 November 2008. He received the Kalapi Award (1998) and the Vali Gujarati Award (2008).

The Shakespeare of Urdu — the playwright whose ghazals still sing. Agha Hashar Kashmiri (1879–1935), born Muhammad Shah on 3 April 1879 at Banaras, was the Urdu stage's great playwright-poet — the man remembered as the Shakespeare of Urdu. His father, Ghani Shah, had come to Banaras from Kashmir, and the boy grew up between Arabic and Persian learning and the travelling Parsi theatre companies that passed through the city. He began writing verse at seventeen, and wrote his first play, Aaftaab-e-Mohabbat, at eighteen; when an elder of the theatre dismissed playwriting as no work for a boy, he took the taunt as a challenge and made the stage his life. He had already gone to Bombay at fourteen, and he rose through its theatre companies — his first play for the New Alfred Theatrical Company, Mureed-e-Shak, drawn from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, was a success, and his pay rose from fifteen rupees a month to forty. Over the following decades he wrote plays in Urdu, Hindi and Bangla: Shakespeare retold for Indian audiences — Shaheed-e-Naaz, Said-e-Hawas, Safaid Khoon after King Lear, Khwab-e-Hasti after Macbeth — and stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, above all Sita Banbas and Bilwa Mangal, with Yahudi Ki Ladki the most staged of them all. He worked in Bombay and in Calcutta, and his plays carried ghazals and songs inside their dialogue, so his verse travelled on the stage as well as on the page. He married the classical singer Mukhtar Begum, elder sister of Farida Khanum. Shortly before his death he moved to Lahore to try his hand at film production, and he died there in 1935, aged 56, and was buried in the Miani Sahib graveyard. His ghazals are still sung — the spring breeze that betrays a lover's secret, the world forgotten in remembrance, the road of the beloved set against the road of the mosque.

Agha Shahid Ali was a Kashmiri-American poet who wrote in English and carried the ghazal into American poetry. Born in New Delhi in 1949 and raised in Kashmir, he studied at the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi, then earned a PhD at Pennsylvania State University and an MFA at the University of Arizona, teaching at universities including Hamilton, Princeton and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His collections include The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office and Rooms Are Never Finished, a National Book Award finalist, and he translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz and edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. His poems return again and again to Kashmir, exile, memory, loss and home. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 8 December 2001.

Hyderabad's craftsman — difficult metres made graceful, and the pen-name that bends every heart. Ahmad Husain Mail (1857/58–1914) was a poet of Hyderabad in the Deccan, praised in his own time for the technical mastery of his verse. He wrote in difficult metres that few others attempted, and he was best known for his rubais — four-line poems of wit and reflection — alongside his ghazals. Nineteen of his ghazals and nineteen of his rubais survive, and his collected verse appeared in his lifetime as Deewan-e-Doctor Mail (Agra, 1897); a later selection of his work, Bada-e-Sukhan, was gathered after his death and published in 1935. His best-loved lines turn on the play of his own pen-name — Mail, meaning inclination — making love itself the force that bends every heart. He died in 1914.

Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi (1916–2006), born Ahmad Shah Awan on 20 November 1916 at Anga in Khushab district, Punjab, was one of the central figures of modern Urdu literature — poet, short-story writer, critic, journalist and editor. From a family of Sufi pirs, he graduated from the University of the Punjab, Lahore, in 1935, briefly served in the excise department, and then gave his life to letters. He edited Phool, Tehzeeb-i-Niswaan, Adab-i-Lateef, Savera and Naqoosh, edited the daily Imroze, and from 1962 published his own journal Funoon for almost half a century — the nursery of a generation, Parveen Shakir among his mentees. As secretary-general of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Punjab (1948) and then Pakistan (1949), and from 1974 of the Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, Lahore, he was repeatedly arrested in the 1950s and 1970s for his convictions. His poetry moves between the traditional ghazal and the modern nazm, and his short stories — Chaupal, Bagooley, Sannata among them — are counted, by some critics, second only to Premchand in their depiction of rural life. He received the Pride of Performance (1968) and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1980), and died in Lahore on 10 July 2006.

Amritsar's voice of Partition — where does the day go, where does the night go? Ahmad Rahi (1923–2002), born Ghulam Ahmad on 12 November 1923 at Amritsar in Punjab, was a Pakistani Punjabi poet and writer, an Urdu ghazal poet, and one of Lollywood's most prolific film lyricists. Schooled at Amritsar, he went on to M.A.O. College, Lahore, where he was expelled for taking part in political movements, and he stood with the Progressive Writers' Movement. At Partition in 1947 he migrated to Pakistan and became the founding editor of the quarterly literary magazine *Sawera* at Lahore. His first book, *Tarinjan* (1952), sang Punjabi culture and mourned Partition's dead — its lament poems carry the folk lovers Heer, Sahiban and Sohni through the bloodshed of 1947 — and his Urdu ghazals were gathered in *Rag-e-Jaan*. For the cinema he wrote more than 1,900 songs and some 260 film scripts across 51 films, Punjabi and Urdu, among them *Heer Ranjha* (1970), *Mirza Jat* (1967), *Baji* (1963) and *Yakke Wali* (1957). His services to letters were honoured with the Pride of Performance and the Adamjee Literary Award. He died at Lahore on 2 September 2002, after seven months of paralysis.

Lisan-ul-Asr — the master of satire who laughed at a changing world.

Aligarh's Progressive voice — memory is a torment, so take it away, O Lord. Akhtar Ansari (1909–1988), born Muhammad Ayub Ansari on 1 October 1909 at Budaun in Uttar Pradesh, was an Indian Urdu poet, short-story writer and critic, and a firm voice of the Progressive movement. He was schooled at the Anglo-Arabic School, took his B.A. and teaching degree from Aligarh Muslim University — where he also taught at the university school — and in 1947 took his M.A. in Urdu and lectured in the university's Urdu department, later working at its Training College. He stood by progressive ideas in his poetry and his criticism without joining the movement as an activist, giving its concerns a firm critical and scientific base in his writings. His poetry collections include Naghma-i-Rooh, Aabgeeney (1945), Tedhi Zameen and Suroor-e-Jaan; his stories appeared in Andhi Duniya aur Doosre Afsaane and Nazo aur Doosre Afsaane; and his critical books include Hali aur Naya Tanqueedee Shaoor and Afaadi Adab, besides studies of the ghazal itself. He died on 5 October 1988 at Aligarh, aged 79.

Akhtar Sheerani (1905–1948), born Muhammad Dawood Khan at Tonk on 4 May 1905, was Lahore's poet of romance. His father, the scholar Hafiz Mahmood Khan Shirani, had the boy taught at home — religious learning, wrestling for the body, poetry for the soul — and when the family was driven from Tonk after a revolt against the Nawab, father and son settled in Lahore, where Dawood passed Munshi Fazil (1921) and Adeeb Fazil (1922) at Oriental College and took the pen name Akhtar under the guidance of Maulana Tajwar Najibabadi. From 1923 to 1939 he edited, in succession, Intikhab, Bahaaristan, Khyaalistan and Romaan, and wrote, at a time when the Progressive movement dominated Urdu letters, a poetry deliberately apart from it: not slogans but youth, beauty, nature and longing, in the spirit of Shelley and Keats — a verse that, in Pakistan Post's words, "exhales verse as a flower exhales fragrance". Woman, for him, was not one figure but beauty itself — beloved, wife, mother, sister — and nature took its colour from her. His life, by contrast, was a succession of losses — a son, a friend, a love called Salma who did not return his love — and drink undid his health. He died at Lahore on 9 September 1948, aged forty-three, two days before Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and lies in Miani Sahib Graveyard.

Pillar of the modern Urdu nazm — Sahitya Akademi laureate and the Filmfare-winning pen behind *Waqt*'s famous dialogues. Akhtar-ul-Iman (12 November 1915 – 9 March 1996), born at Qila Patthargarh near Najibabad in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor district, was one of the pillars of the modern Urdu nazm. Raised in harsh circumstances — an orphan's upbringing in Delhi — he worked menial jobs while studying, graduated from the Anglo-Arabic (Zakir Husain) College in Delhi, and took his master's in Urdu from Aligarh Muslim University. After a spell as a staff artist at All India Radio, he moved to Bombay in 1945 and became one of Hindi cinema's most respected screenwriters: his dialogues shaped landmark B.R. Films productions including *Kanoon* (1960), *Dharmputra* (1961) and *Waqt* (1965), earning him the Filmfare Best Dialogue award twice (1963, 1966); the famous "glass-house" line of *Waqt* is his. As a poet he deliberately set the ghazal aside, choosing the nazm — in free, conversational verse — to speak of the modern individual's alienation, moral choice and philosophical humanism. His collection *Yadein* won the 1962 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu. He died in Mumbai on 9 March 1996.

Ale Ahmad Suroor (1911–2002), born in Badaun, was one of the founders of modern Urdu criticism — a poet who became the conscience of Urdu literary judgement. His father, a postmaster, wanted him to be a doctor, so he first graduated in science from St John's College, Agra; but literature claimed him, and he took an M.A. in English in 1934. He taught English and Urdu at Aligarh and Lucknow, and from 1958 to 1974 was professor and Head of Urdu at Aligarh Muslim University, later founding and directing the Iqbal Institute at the University of Kashmir. His critical books — *Tanqeed Kya Hai?* (1947), *Adab aur Nazriya* (1954) and above all *Nazar aur Nazariya* (1973) — turned Urdu criticism from impressionistic praise into a disciplined, principled art; his lifelong study of Iqbal (*Iqbal: Nazriya aur Shairi*, 1978) remains a landmark. He wrote poetry too, in ghazal and nazm, with a critic's clarity and a poet's heart — the shore's peace weighed against the joy of fighting the storm. India honoured him with the Sahitya Akademi Award (1974) and the Padma Bhushan (1991). He died in Delhi on 9 February 2002.

The historian of Urdu letters — a cup shown but never handed, and a thought the tongue never spoke. Ali Jawad Zaidi (1916–2004), born on 10 March 1916 in the village of Karhan in Azamgarh district — now Mau district — in Uttar Pradesh, was an Indian Urdu poet, critic and historian of Urdu literature. Schooled first at home and then at the Mehmoodabad state school, he passed his matriculation in 1935, his intermediate in 1937 and his B.A. from Lucknow University in 1939. The freedom struggle drew him to the Communist Party of India, and he was jailed for six months for his part in it. After independence he served in government in prominent positions, including administrative work in the commission set up for the development of Urdu. His poems, gathered in Tesha-i-Aawaaz and Rag-e-Sung, often carry his patriotic concerns, while his critical books — Do Adabi School, Qaseeda Nigaaraan-e-Uttar Pradesh, Tareekh Urdu Adab ki Tadween and Urdu Mein Qaumi Shairi ke Sau Saal — and his English history of Urdu literature made him one of the great record-keepers of the tradition. He received the Padma Shri in 1988 and died at Lucknow on 7 December 2004, aged 88.

Ali Sardar Jafri (1913–2000), born in Balrampur, Gonda district, U.P., was one of the most prominent Urdu poets of the twentieth century — a progressive poet, critic, and film lyricist. Raised in Lucknow's religious atmosphere, he could reportedly recite a thousand verses of Anis by age eight. Admitted to Aligarh Muslim University in 1933, he was expelled in 1936 for political reasons; he graduated from Zakir Husain College, Delhi (1938), and his Lucknow University postgraduate studies ended with his 1940–41 arrest for anti-war poems. He presided over the first conference of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Lucknow (1936), co-edited *Naya Adab* (1939–1949), and later edited *Guftagu*; his poetry collections — *Nai Duniya Ko Salaam* (1948), *Asia Jaag Utha* (1951), *Ek Khwab Aur*, *Mera Safar*, *Sarhad* — carry his romantic lyricism and revolutionary hope. He wrote film lyrics (*Dharti Ke Lal*, 1946; *Pardesi*, 1957), produced the documentary *Kabir, Iqbal and Freedom* and the 18-part TV serial *Kahkashan* on Urdu poets. He received the Padma Shri (1967), the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship (1971) and the Jnanpith Award (1997). He died in Mumbai on 1 August 2000.

Allama Shibli Nomani (1857–1914), born at Bindwal in Azamgarh district, was the scholar who gave Urdu its modern historiography. Taught first by the rationalist Maulana Muhammad Farooq Chirayakoti and then, on Hajj, by scholars in Arabia, he joined Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's Anglo-Mohammedan College, Aligarh, in 1882 as professor of Arabic and Persian, where sixteen years beside Thomas Arnold opened him to Western thought without loosening his oriental roots. After Sir Syed's death he advised Hyderabad State on education, then served as principal of Nadwatul Ulama (1908–1913), before returning to Azamgarh. His biographies — above all Al-Farooq — set a new standard: history written from sources, in lucid Urdu prose, rather than panegyric. As a critic, Sher-ul-Ajam made him a founder of Urdu literary criticism. He founded Shibli National College in 1883 and, in his last year, bequeathed his house and orchard for Darul Mussanifin (the House of Writers) at Azamgarh; its first formal meeting was held on 21 November 1914, three days after his death, and his disciple Syed Sulaiman Nadvi carried the house — and Sirat-un-Nabi — forward. His poetry, small in bulk beside his prose, carries the same mind: a reformer's grief for a community that had lost its learning, and a believer's address to eternity.

Ambar Bahraichi (1949–2021) was a prominent modern Urdu poet and a well-known Sanskrit scholar. Born Mohammad Idris at Bahraich on 5 July 1949, he made Lucknow his home and his literary base. He was a Sahitya Akademi award winner, and his bibliography joins the two traditions he lived in: Urdu collections such as Doob (1990), Khali Seepiyon Ka Iztirab (2000) and Malang Malhar (2013) stand beside Sanskrit and critical works including Maha Bhinishkarman (1987) and studies of Anand Vardhan. His ghazal is spare, image-driven and quietly philosophical — rivers and thirst, faces and masks, victories won outside the house and lost within it. A man who seems to have been a river himself, carrying the thirst of every stream he passed, he wrote of success as a face that changes colour, and of solitude as the silence of a forest of faces. He died at Lucknow on 7 May 2021, leaving a body of work that bridges Urdu poetry and Sanskrit learning.

Ameeq Hanafi (1928–1988) was one of the most prominent modern Urdu poets and a critic of wide range. Born Abdul Aziz Hanfi at Indore on 3 November 1928, he was educated at Mhow, matriculating in 1946 and taking two M.A. degrees, in Political Science in 1952 and in History in 1954. Alongside the social sciences he cultivated a deep interest in music and Indian philosophy. He joined All India Radio and retired from a senior position, remaining a broadcaster at heart. He began writing poetry at Mhow. His first collection, Sang-e-Pairahan (1958), still carried the imprint of Progressive poetics, but his later work — Shajar-e-Sada, Shab Gasht, and the long poem Salsalat-ul-Jaras — established him as a modernist of great promise and fulfilment. He also wrote criticism, including work on Amir Khusro and the study of poetry and poetics Sher Cheeze Deegar Ast, which ranges across Eastern and Western poetics. In both verse and criticism, he joined modern experiment to a classical sense of form.

Amjad Islam Amjad (4 August 1944 – 10 February 2023) was the poet Pakistan invited into its living rooms — through verse, and through television dramas that became household names. Born in Lahore to a family originally from Sialkot, he took an MA in Urdu literature from Punjab University (1967), lectured at Govt. M.A.O. College Lahore (1968–1975), directed at Pakistan Television Corporation (1975–1979), and later served as Director General of the Urdu Science Board (1989) and project director of the Children's Library Complex. Poet, playwright, lyricist, columnist, critic and translator, he authored more than seventy books. His first poetry book appeared in 1974; his collections include Barzakh (1974), Satvan Dar (1978), Fishar (1982), Barish ki Aawaz (1997) and Yahiin Kahiin (2006). His TV dramas — Waris (1979), Dehleez, Samandar, Raat, Waqt, Apnay Log — made him a household name, as did his famous ghazal "Insha Ji Utho", sung by Ghulam Ali, and the lyric "Mann Ki Lagan". His style is simple, humanistic and philosophical, emotionally direct — everyday feeling with depth. He received the Pride of Performance (1987), Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1998) and Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2023).

Anand Bakshi (1930–2002), born Bakshi Anand Prakash Vaid on 21 July 1930 in Rawalpindi, was Hindi cinema's most prolific lyricist — the soldier turned poet whose plain words carried four decades of film songs. His grandfather was a superintendent of police in Rawalpindi and his father served in the army; his mother died when he was nine. At fourteen he joined the Royal Indian Navy, serving three years, then joined the army, where his poems appeared in the army's own magazine; he left the army in 1950 and came to Bombay dreaming of becoming a singer. Sahir Ludhianvi taught him to weave poetry into lyrics and introduced him to producers, and his first film songs came in Bhalaa Aadmi (1958). His breakthrough came with Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965) and Milan (1967), and from there he wrote nearly thirty-three hundred songs in about six hundred and thirty films — more than any other lyricist of his time — for Laxmikant-Pyarelal, R. D. Burman, Kalyanji-Anandji and a generation of composers, becoming Rajesh Khanna's favoured lyricist. His songs run the whole range of Hindi film feeling — "Dum Maro Dum", "Chingari Koi Bhadke", "Kuch To Log Kahenge", "Zindagi Ke Safar Mein", "Chitthi Aayi Hai", "Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin Todenge", "Tujhe Dekha To Yeh Jaana Sanam", "Mehendi Laga Ke Rakhna", "Aadmi Musafir Hai" — love songs and laments, lullabies and anthems, in words anyone could sing. He won the Filmfare Award for Best Lyricist four times, in 1978, 1981, 1995 and 1999, from forty nominations, and he was still writing hit songs at seventy, for Mohabbatein (2000). He also sang in five films himself. He died in Bombay on 30 March 2002, aged 71. His son Rakesh's life of him, Nagme, Kisse, Baatein, Yaadein, appeared in 2021.

Lucknow's judge-poet — the mother tongue he would never give up, and the voice of Lucknow's shared culture. Anand Narain Mulla (1901–1997) was a judge, parliamentarian and Urdu poet of Lucknow — a Kashmiri Brahmin who called Urdu his mother tongue. He was born in Lucknow on 24 October 1901, the son of Jagat Narain Mulla, a leading advocate. He was educated at Firangi Mahal under Barkatullah Raza Firangi Mahali, then at Government Jubilee High School and College, taking his B.A. in 1921, his M.A. in English in 1923 and his LL.B. in 1925 from Canning College, Lucknow. He first wrote poetry in English, in 1926, and then moved to Urdu, learning the craft from Barkatullah Raza and under the influence of Brij Narain Chakbast. He practised law, and from 1954 to 1961 he was a judge of the Allahabad High Court. His first collection of poems, Joo-e-Sheer, appeared in 1949; Meri Hadis-e-Umr-e-Gurezan won the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu in 1964, and he received the Iqbal Samman when he was 92. In 1967 he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Lucknow as an Independent, and from 1972 to 1978 he sat in the Rajya Sabha. He chaired the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu and was the first chairman of the UP Urdu Academy, from 1972 to 1977. He also translated Iqbal's poetry into English. His saying — "Urdu is my mother tongue! I can give up my religion but not my mother tongue" — is still quoted as the voice of Lucknow's shared culture. He died in New Delhi on 12 June 1997, aged 95.

Arsh Malsiani (1908–1979) — born Balmukund on 20 September 1908 in Malsiyan, Punjab — was a distinguished Urdu poet, translator, prose writer and editor, known as the Raj Kavi of Punjab. His father, Labhu Ram "Josh" Malsiyani, was a celebrated Urdu-Persian scholar-poet and disciple of Dagh Dehlvi; that Dagh lineage is Arsh's literary inheritance. He began as an overseer in the Punjab Irrigation department, then taught for about fifteen years at the Government Industrial School, Ludhiana, earning his F.A. and B.A. along the way. From 1948 to 1968 he served in the Publications Division of the Government of India — Assistant Editor of the Urdu monthly Aajkal under Josh Malihabadi, and its editor from 1954. His poetry collections are Haft Rang, Chang-o-Aahang, Sharar-e-Sang and Aahang-e-Hijaz; he translated Umar Khayyam's rubais (Hast-o-Bood), gathered his humorous prose as Post-mortem, and published a biographical sketch of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1976). He died in Delhi on 15 December 1979.

Syed Anwar Hussain 'Arzoo' Lakhnavi (1873–1951) was a leading poet of the Lucknow school of Urdu poetry. Born in Lucknow into a cultured, well-off literary family, he was the son of Mir Zakir Hussain 'Yas' and the younger brother of Mir Yusuf Hussain 'Qayas', both poets. Educated at home and later in Arabic and Persian under Lucknow scholars, he wrote his first marsiya at twelve and became a disciple of Syed Zaman Ali 'Jalal' Lakhnavi, succeeding him as guide to Jalal's disciples. Though he wrote in nearly every genre — marsiya, qasida, masnavi, rubai, naat and more — he is remembered above all for his ghazals, collected in Fughan-e-Arzoo, Jahan-e-Arzoo and Nishan-e-Arzoo. His hallmark was plain, conversational language: he brought the ghazal closer to everyday speech without abandoning its Lucknow elegance. In 1942 he moved to Bombay and became one of the first mainstream Urdu poets to write for Hindi cinema, later migrating to Karachi, where he joined Radio Pakistan and died in 1951.

Asar Lakhnavi (1885–1967), born Mirza Jafar Ali Khan, was a prominent poet of the later Lucknow School, a critic, scholar and civil servant. Born on 12 July 1885 in Katra Abu Turab, Lucknow, he was educated at Canning College, served as Deputy Collector and held other important administrative posts, and later worked as a minister in the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, for which service India conferred on him the Padma Bhushan. A disciple of Aziz Lakhnavi, he wrote on traditional subjects with great linguistic finesse. His poetry collections include Baharaan, Naubaharaan and Uroos-e-Firtrat, his critical studies include Anis ki Marsiya Nigari, Mutala-e-Ghalib and Chhan Been, and his dictionary Farhang-e-Asar remains a landmark. He died in Lucknow on 6 June 1967.

Aziz Hamid Madni (1922–1991) was a Pakistani poet, critic and translator, and one of the stalwarts of the new Urdu ghazal in Pakistan. He was born on 15 June 1922 in Raipur, in British India, the son of Mohammad Hamid Saqi — a student of Shibli Nomani and a classmate of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar. In 1948 he moved to Pakistan and settled in Karachi. After a master's degree in English, he taught and worked in journalism for a short while, then joined Radio Pakistan as a programme executive. Three collections of his poetry appeared in his lifetime — Chashm-e-Nigaraan (1962), Dasht-e-Imkaan (1964) and Nakhl-e-Gumaan (1983) — and his two-volume critical survey of modern Urdu poetry, Jadeed Urdu Shaeri, remains a landmark study. His translations of Shakespeare's Othello and Antony and Cleopatra, and most of his translations of French poetry into Urdu, were never published. Forty-three of his ghazals and thirty-seven of his sher survive, and some of his ghazals have been set to music. He died in Karachi on 23 April 1991.

Aziz Lakhnavi, born Mirza Mohammad Hadi in Lucknow in 1882, was a distinguished Persian and Urdu scholar and poet of the Lucknow school. His family, descended from migrants from Shiraz who first settled in Kashmir and later moved to Lucknow under the Awadh nobles, was renowned for scholarship. Educated at home after his father's death when he was seven, he later taught Persian and Urdu at Aminabad School and then became guardian to the siblings of Ali Mohammad Khan, Maharaja of Mahmudabad, spending the rest of his life there. A disciple of Safi Lakhnavi, he practised every poetic form and earned a particular reputation as a qasida poet, praised for the magnanimity of his language and the vitality of his imagination. His works include Gulkadah and the collected Kulliyat-e-Azeez.

Balraj Komal (1928–2013) was one of the leading modern poets of the Urdu nazm in India. Born on 25 September 1928 at Sialkot, he fled to Delhi in the Partition of 1947, carrying the displacement into a lifetime of poetry. After retiring as an Education Officer with the Delhi Administration, he wrote full-time — poems, short stories and criticism — and served on the Delhi Urdu Akademi and the Sahitya Akademi's advisory board. His collection Parindon Bhara Aasman (Sky Full of Birds) won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985; he also won the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Award twice (1971, 1982) and received the Padma Shri in 2011. His nazms — above all 'A Girl Alone' (1948), a Partition-orphaned girl begging a stranger to become her family — made him a poet of displacement, tenderness and quiet revolt. He died in Delhi in 2013, aged 85.

Delhi's later voice — the doorstep vigil, the night with no dawn, and the gaze that cannot look away. Barq Dehlvi (July 1884 – 9 February 1936), whose real name was Munshi Maharaj Bahadur, was a later voice of Delhi's poetry, born into a Kayastha family of the old city whose men had served in high places at the Mughal court. His father, Munshi Har Narayan Das, was a poet of standing, and his maternal grandfather, Daulat Ram 'Ibrat', kept a diwan and had learned his craft from Zauq, the court poet of the last Mughal king. Barq learned his own craft under Agha Shair Qazalbash. He wrote ghazals, nazms and couplets, and in his early years plays as well — Krishna Avatar and Savitri were staged more than once. His books of verse were Krishna Darpan (1927), Matla-i-Anwar (1929) and Harf-e-Natamaam, published after his death in 1941. His ghazals carry the old Delhi manner into a new century: the doorstep where the lover waits, the night of separation with no dawn in sight, the beloved's face that holds the eye prisoner. He died at Panipat on 9 February 1936.

Bismil Azimabadi (1901–1978) was an Indian freedom-fighter poet from Patna, born Syed Shah Mohammad Hasan into a zamindar family of Azimabad. He took "Bismil" — the wounded one — as his pen name and became a disciple of Shad Azimabadi, frequenting the Qutub-khana Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu Library in Patna. He took part in the independence movement and is reported to have recited his poem "Sarfaroshi" at the Calcutta Congress session of 1920. Most of his poetry was lost; what survived was compiled after his death as *Hikayat-e-Hasti* (1980), and he left a short memoir, *Yaraan-i-Maikadah* (1976). He died in Patna on 20 June 1978. The Bihar Urdu Academy's Bismil Azimabadi Award keeps his name alive.

Chaman Lal Chaman (1934–2019) was an Indian-British Punjabi and Urdu poet, lyricist and radio broadcaster based in London. Born on 15 May 1934 in Pasla, in Jalandhar district, he lost his mother as a child and was called by his father to Nairobi, where he became a presenter on The Voice of Kenya. Moving to Britain, he worked for the BBC's Asian service and Panjab Radio, started London's first Indian commercial radio programme, *Geetmala*, and anchored weekly programmes on BBC TV One and BBC Radio Four in the 1990s. His lyrics were sung by Asha Bhosle and Jagjit Singh — his Punjabi song "Saun da Mahina" (1979) remains his best-known lyric — while his Urdu ghazals, including those in *Shora-e-London* (1985) and the collection *Phool Khile Chaman-Chaman* (2010), carry a quieter, city-wise voice. He received the Asian Achievers Gold Award in London in 2010 and died in London on 4 February 2019.

Chandar Bhan Kaifi Dehelvi (1878/79–1941) was a Delhi poet of the late classical tradition, educated in Persian and Urdu, who taught Persian for a long period of time. Known for poems on interesting topics as well as patriotic poems, he carried classical discipline into the colonial era: his ghazals hold personal longing beside national consciousness, and his nazm "Nai-Dehli" mourns and questions the new capital rising over old Delhi's ruins. Thirteen of his ghazals and ten of his nazms survive, with Risala-e-Qaumi Nazm (1908) among his books and Khumnistan-e-Kaifi published posthumously in 1951. He died in 1941.

Chandra Parkash Jauhar Bijnauri (1923–1995) was a traditional-style Urdu poet and beloved mushaira voice, born at Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, in 1923. His father, though not a poet himself, was a connoisseur who loved listening to poets in mushairas, and in that atmosphere the young Bijnauri found his calling, taking counsel on his ghazals from Izhar Hussain Khan Izhar Rampuri. After Partition he made his life in Lahore, where his clear, musical ghazals — of love, separation, the sorrows of the age and the praise of Urdu itself — won him a devoted mushaira following. His collection Auraq-e-Gul appeared in 1986. He died in 1995, leaving 21 ghazals that still carry the traditional ghazal's grace without stiffness.

Chiragh Hasan Hasrat (1904 – 26 June 1955) was a Kashmiri-born poet and journalist, famous for his humorous columns. Born at Poonch in Kashmir, he learned Arabic, Persian and Urdu at home, matriculated from Poonch and took his B.A. from Lahore. He worked for *Zamindar*, *Insaaf* and *Ehsaan*, edited *Fauji Akhbar* during the Second World War, and wrote beloved humorous columns — as Columbus in *Nai Dunya*, as Koocha Gard in *Asr-e-Jadeed*, and as Sindbad Jahazi in the daily *Imroz*. In 1926 he launched his own journal *Aftab* from Calcutta. He wrote sixteen books, including the long poetical narrative *Saguzasht-e-Islam* and studies of Jinnah and Iqbal, though no collection of his poetry was ever published. He died at Lahore on 26 June 1955.

Shahjahanpur's classical ghazal poet — love told straight, from its beginning to its end. Dil Shahjahanpuri (1875–1959), born Zameer Hasan Khan in Shahjahanpur in 1875, was a ghazal poet of the old classical line who lived his whole life in the small town whose name he carried. He learnt his craft as a disciple of Amir Meenai, one of the great masters of the nineteenth-century ghazal, and he kept that manner all his life — plain speech, clean rhyme, and love, separation and the wine-cup as his whole world. Two collections of his ghazals survive in print, Naghma-e-Dil and Tarana-e-Dil, and he also wrote a novel, Dard-e-Dil. A full study of his life and work appeared in 1988, nearly thirty years after his death, and it remains the one book devoted to him. He died in Shahjahanpur in 1959, in the town where he was born.

Bijnor's voice of the common person — the pain must melt, and from this Himalaya a Ganga must flow. Dushyant Kumar (1931–1975), born in September 1931 at Rajpur Navada, a small village in Bijnor district, was the poet who carried the ghazal into Hindi and made it the voice of the common person. He took his MA in Hindi from Allahabad University, where his literary life began, and worked as a scriptwriter at All India Radio in Delhi before moving to Bhopal, where he served at Akashvani and in the state's cultural and language department. He wrote poems, novels and plays — Ek Kanth Vishpayi and Mann Ke Kon among them — but his name rests on the ghazal: in plain, spoken Hindi he gave the old form a new anger and a new hope, writing of hunger, of locked doors, of lamps that never reach the city. His collection Saaye Mein Dhoop — Sunlight in the Shade — appeared in 1975, the year of his death, and its lines were taken up in movements and on the streets, quoted in parliaments and protests alike. He died of a heart attack at Bhopal on 30 December 1975, aged 44; a manuscript museum in Bhopal keeps his papers.

Ehsan Danish (born Ehsan-ul-Haq; died 22 March 1982, Lahore) was a self-taught Urdu poet, prose writer, linguist and lexicographer known as Shair-e-Mazdoor, the Poet of the Workmen. Born in Kandhla, Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, into a poor family, he could not continue formal schooling and taught himself Arabic and Persian. Migrating to Lahore, he worked for years as a labourer — mason, painter's assistant, watchman and more — before establishing himself as a writer and founding the publishing house Maktaba-e-Danish. He wrote more than 80 books of poetry, prose, linguistics and lexicography, including the classic autobiography Jahan-e-Danish, and received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 1978. His early verse was romantic; his mature poetry spoke for labourers and common people in plain, direct Urdu.

Fahmida Riaz (1946–2018), born 28 July 1946 at Meerut in a literary family, was Pakistan's poet of resistance — the woman's voice that refused, for fifty years, to be either decorative or silent. Her father, educationist Riaz-ud-Din Ahmed, was transferred to Sindh, so she grew up in Hyderabad, lost her father at four, and was raised by her mother; her first poem appeared in Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi's Funoon when she was fifteen. Her first collection, Patthar ki Zaban (1967), already spoke a young woman's desire with a directness Urdu had seldom heard; her second, Badan Dareeda (1973) — "the torn-bodied" — was denounced by conservatives as erotic and became a milestone of modern Urdu poetry for exactly that honesty. Under Zia-ul-Haq she was charged with sedition and spent seven years in exile in India, where she was poet-in-residence at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and learnt Hindi. On return she led the National Book Foundation, later headed the Urdu Dictionary Board in Karachi, and kept writing: Godaavari, Khatt-e Marmuz, novels, stories, and the first rhymed Urdu translation of Rumi's Masnavi, Khana e Aab O Gil, alongside translations of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Shaikh Ayaz from Sindhi. Her late poem "Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley" (2014) — addressed across the border — made her, once more, the conscience of two countries at once. She received the Pride of Performance (2010) and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, and died in Lahore on 21 November 2018.

Lucknow's classical voice — the son of Inder Sabha's author, and eloquence itself. Fasahat Lucknowi (1857–1930), born Syed Abbas Hasan in Lucknow in 1857, was a representative of Lucknow's classical poetic tradition — and the elder son of the man who made Lucknow's name in Urdu letters. His father, Agha Hasan Amanat, wrote Inder Sabha, the first stage play in Urdu, and died in 1858, when Fasahat was still a small child. His upbringing and education were taken up by his elder brother, Syed Hasan Latafat, in whose literary company his own gift for verse was refined. In a short time he made his name as a poet of originality, refined and elegant language, and strong craftsmanship — the delicacy, vibrancy and subtle elegance of Lucknow's literary culture, kept alive in his ghazals. His poetry was first published under various names, so few readers knew it was his; it was later gathered and arranged as Diwan-e-Fasahat, with a preface by Abdul Halim Sharar and tributes from his contemporaries and students. He had a considerable circle of disciples, and he is counted among the prominent poets of his era. He died in Lucknow in 1930.