Urdu Best Poetry Biography
Source:-Google.com.pk
As it happened, the Deccan emerged as the earliest centre, even though the language had first developed in northern India, as a result of an interesting linguistic interaction between the natives and the Muslim conquerors from Central Asia, who settled there in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, The period stretching roughly from the middle of the fourteenth centuries to the middle of the eighteenth produce a number of poets. They are claimed both by Urdu and Hindi literary historians, but Quli Qutub Shah (1565-1611) is generally acknowledged as the first notable poet, like Chaucer is English, with a volume of significant poetry in a language later named Urdu. He was followed by several others, among whom Wali Deccani (1635-1707) and Siraj Aurangabadi ( 1715-1763) deserves special mention. Delhi emerged as another significant centre with Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda (1713-80), Khwaja Mir Dard (1721-85), Mir Taqi Mir (1722-1810), Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869) and Nawab Mirza Khan Dagh (1831-1905). It reached its height of excellence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lucknow made its way as the third important centre with Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi (1725-1824), Inshallah Khan Insha (1757-1817), Khwaja Haidar Ali Atish (1778-1846), Iman Baksh Nasikh (1787-1838), Mir Babr Ali Anis (1802-74) and Mirza Salamat Ali Dabir (1803-1875). These literary capitals, where the classical tradition developed, had their individual stylistic and thematic identities, but broadly it may be said that the ghazal (love lyric) reached its zenith with Mir and Ghalib, qasida (panegyric) with Sauda, mathnawi (romance) with Mir Hasan and marthiya (elegy) with Anis and Dabir.
Poetry is universal as every language spoken by mankind has in it some poetic elements. Interestingly, though languages differ significantly in the manner of expression, the nature of poetic expression remains common indicating that poetry is more of a human phenomenon rather than syntactical expression. From expression of love for a woman to revolt against a regime, poetry carries in it an element of subtlety and spontaneity—something created by the environs of the poet. To understand a great poet, therefore, we must first look into his mind and his awareness of the milieu exterior. Since Ghalib, undoubtedly the greatest poet of Urdu language, expressed himself mainly through his writings of love sonnets, it is imperative that we examine the art of love sonnets, the language they are written in, and the environs that prompted these writings to understand how Ghalib became a master of this genre.
In this chapter we will examine the roots of Urdu language, Urdu poetry and particularly the genre of love sonnets, ghazals, in Urdu. The following chapter will examine the life and works of Ghalib and the third chapter will offer a broad view of Ghalib’s art of expression in love sonnets, the ghazals.
Urdu, literally meaning “camp” in Turkish, is a mixture of many tongues and languages. Muslims brought many different languages to India, and diluted India’s languages freely with words from their own. When Delhi was the seat of the Muslim Empire in the late 12th century, the languages around Delhi, mainly Brij Bhasha and Sauraseni became heavily mixed with Persian, the lingua franca of the Muslim rulers. Other languages that found their way into the languages of India were Turkish, Arabic and later English. Whereas much of the vocabulary of the original languages (Sauraseni, for example) changed, the basic grammar structure remained intact. In the 13th century, the language of India became widely known as Hindvi, Hindi, and Brij Bhasha and was written in the original devanagri script [the Sanskrit script]. The name gUrdug was given to this thriving language of the region in the period of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan (1627-1658). The language was introduced to the southern province of India, Hyderabad Deccan, by the armies and followers of the Tughlaq and Khilji kings in the 14th century. Affected by the dialects of the South, the language became known as Deccani (after Hyderabad Deccan), having adopted the Persian script and replaced Persian in offices as the official language. Since the language was written in the devanagri script for quite some time around Delhi, it had been erroneously assumed that the first Urdu poet was Amir Khusro (1253-1325) from the Deccan. The fact is many poets up in the North had already been writing Urdu poetry, namely Kabir Das, Mira Bai, Guru Nanak, Malik Mohammad Jaisi and Abdul Rahim Khan Khanan, who lived much earlier than Amir Khusro.
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