Wali Mohammed Wali (also known as Wali Deccani) was born in 1667 in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. He loved travelling, which he regarded as a means of education. His visit to Delhi in 1700 is considered to be of great significance for Urdu Gazals. His simple, sensuous and melodious poems in Urdu, awakened the Persian loving poets of Delhi to the beauty and capability of “Rekhta” (the old name for Urdu) as a medium of poetic expression. His visit thus stimulated the growth and development of Urdu Gazal in Delhi.
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Mirza Asadullah Beg — known to posterity as Ghalib, a nom de plume he adopted in the tradition of all classical Urdu poets, was born in the city of Agra, of parents with Turkish aristocratic ancestry, on December 27th, 1797. As to the precise date, Imtiyaz Ali Arshi has conjectured, on the basis of Ghalib’s horoscope, that the poet might have been born a month later, in January 1798. When he was only five years old, his father, Abdullah Beg Khan died in a battle while working under Rao Raja Bakhtwar Singh of Alwar and his uncle Nasrullah Beg Khan took charge of him. But he lost his uncle also at the tender age of eight.
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Khwaja Mir Dard (Urdu: ????? ??? ???) (b. 1721? d. 1785) is one of the three major poets of the Delhi School the other two being Mir Taqi Mir and Sauda who could be called the pillars of the classical Urdu ghazal.
Philosophy
Dard was first and foremost a mystic, a prominent member of the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi order, and the head of the Muhammadi path (tariqah muhammadiyah, a Mujaddidi offshoot) in Delhi. He regarded the phenomenal world as a veil of the eternal Reality, and this life as a term of exile from our real home. Dard inherited his mystical temperament from his father, Khwaja Muhammad Nasir Andalib, who was a mystic saint and a poet, and the founder of the Muhammadi path.
Education
Dard received his education in an informal way at home, and in the company of the learned, acquiring in due course a command of Arabic and Persian, as also of Sufi lore. He also developed a deep love of music, possibly, through his association with singers and qawaals who frequented his father’s house. He renounced earthly pleasures at the young age of 28, and led a life of piety and humility.
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Josh Malihabadi was born as Shabbir Hasan Khan on 5th December, 1898 at Malihabad. He did his senior Cambridge from St. Peter’s College, Agra in 1914. In 1918, he spent about six months at Shantiniketan. He studied Arabic and Persian. Due to the death of his father, Bashir Ahmed Khan, in 1916, Josh was unable to avail of a college education.
In 1925, Josh started work at the Osmania University, supervising translation work. He was exiled from the state of Hyderabad for writing a nazm against the Nizam. He then started the newsletter/magazine called the ‘Kaleem’ in which he openly wrote articles in favour of independence and against the British. Soon, he was being called “shaayar-e-inquilaab”. He also got actively involved in the freedom struggle and became close to quite a few of the political leaders of that era, specially Jawahar Lal Nehru.
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Ali Sikandar ‘Jigar Muradabadi’ has a special place in the history of Urdu poetry. A flamboyant and cavalier poet, he set many poetic meetings on fire with his style of recitation and rindana verses. He was born in Moradabad in 1890, (18901960) as “Ali Sikandar”. The Mughal royalty in Delhi employed his ancestral family and late in 18th century, it moved to Azampur and Moradabad. Jigar had traditional education in Arabic and Farsi. He didn’t really have a teacher or ustad and showed one ghazal to Dagh Dehlvi. But Dagh died on February 10, 1905. At this time Jigar was only 15 years old and had just begun to write poetry. Mazhar Jaleel ‘Shauq Bachrayuni’ a schoolmate of Jigar says in his book ‘Yadgar-e-Jigar’: “together we would consult Munshi Hayat Baksh ‘Rasa Rampuri’ for correcting our poetry who later became his ustad”.
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Javed Akhtar,born January 17, 1945, is an Urdu and Hindi (Hindustani) poet, lyricist and scriptwriter from India. Some of his most successful work was done in the late 1970s and 1980s with Salim Khan as half of the script-writing duo credited as Salim-Javed.
Javed Akhtar was born on January 17, 1945 in Gwalior State (now Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh) to Jan Nisar Akhtar, a Bollywood film songwriter and Urdu poet, and Safia Akhtar, a teacher and writer. His lineage can be traced back to seven generations of writers. The highly respected Urdu poet Majaz was his maternal uncle and the works of his grandfather, Muzter Khairabadi, are looked upon as a milestone in Urdu poetry. Akhtar has one sibling; his younger brother is renowned psychoanalyst Salman Akhtar.
After his birth, his parents moved to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, and later to Aligarh. Young Javed Akhtar lost his mother at a tender age and his father frequently moved back and forth between Lucknow and Bombay, so he and his brother spent most of their time with relatives. At the age of eight, he was admitted to the sixth class in a well-known school of Lucknow, the Colvin Taluqdars’ College. From Lucknow he moved to Aligarh to live with his maternal aunt. He took admission in a well known school of Aligarh, the Minto Circle. The school is part of famous Aligarh Muslim University.
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Ali Sikandar Jigar Moradabadi (1890-1960) (Urdu : ??? ???? ????? ), born “Ali Sikandar”, was a poet who hailed from Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India, and is famous for his Urdu ghazals. He took on the takhallus (nom de plume) of Jigar.
He belonged to the classical school of ghazal writing and was a mentor of Majrooh Sultanpuri, a famous lyricist of Indian Film Industry who penned many popular songs in Hindi/Urdu.
Jigar remained a keen drinker all his life and was famous for his forgetfulness and absent-mindedness. His ghazals remain very popular with lovers of Urdu poetry. Many remark that the era of classical Urdu poetry ended with Jigar.
One of his most memorable couplets is:
yeh ishq nahin aasaan bas itna samaj lijiye,
eik aag ka dariyaa hai aur doob ke jaana hai
Translation: Love is like an ocean of fire and the lover must drown to cross through it.
Abu Zafar Sirajuddin Muhammad Bahadur Shah Zafar (Urdu: ??? ??? ?????? ?????? ???? ?????? ??? ???), also known as Bahadur Shah or Bahadur Shah II (Urdu: ?????? ??? ????; October 24, 1775 ? 7 November 1862) was the last of the Mughal emperors in India. He was the son of Akbar Shah II from his Hindu wife Lalbai. He became the Mughal Emperor upon his father’s death on September 28, 1838. Zafar (Urdu: ???) was his nom de plume (takhallus) as an Urdu poet.
Emperor and the Mutiny
Emperor Bahadur Shah II presided over a Mughal empire that stretched barely beyond the modern city of Delhi. The Sikh Empire in the Punjab and Kashmir, the Maratha Empire, and the British Empire were the dominant political and military powers in 19th-century India. Hundreds of minor kings fragmented the land. The emperor was paid some respect and allowed a pension and authority to collect some taxes, and maintain a token force in Delhi by the British, but he posed no threat to any power in India. Bahadur Shah II himself did not excel in statecraft or possess any imperial ambitions.
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