Bazm-i Aakhir: The Last Gathering - A vivid portrait of life in the Red Fort

By Munshi Faizuddin

Ather Farouqui is a pioneering scholar of Urdu language and education. He was conferred the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 2012 for his Urdu and Hindi translations of Sons of Babur (Babur ki Aulad), an English play by Salman Khurshid. Farouqui’s academic focus lies on aspects of Urdu, Urdu-related politics, as well as Muslims in contemporary India. One of his notable publications include the translation of The Life and Poetry of Bahadur Shah Zafar. He also edited Muslims and Media Images: News versus Views and Redefining Urdu Politics in India. His most recent publication, Delhi in Historical Perspectives, is a translation of essays on the historical and cerebral cultural life of the capital city by medieval Indian historian Professor K.A. Nizami. These days Farouqui is translating books of the nineteenth and early twentieth century related to the politics of the time and the syncretic culture of Delhi which evolved as a synthesis of over many centuries and synthesized innumerable regional influences from across the country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9788195124862

Book preview

First published in 1885, Bazm-i Aakhir, or The Last Gathering is a rich and lively first-hand account of life in the royal court of the last Mughal emperor in Red Fort, Bahadur Shah Zafar. From meticulous details of the day-to-day happenings inside the fort-palace and the royal protocols to the celebration of festivals such as Eid, Navroz, Diwali, and even Rakshabandhan, this gives us a glimpse into the Delhi of the early nineteenth century.

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© This translation, Ather Farouqui, 2021

Cover image: Detail of a folio from the Dara Shikoh Album, British Library

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Dedication

To Professor Sadiq ur-Rahman Kidwai

and Professor Mohammad Zakir: the

last of the Urdu world typifying its fine

etiquette and humane ethic.

Kidwai Saheb believes in the autonomy

of human beings and uncircumscribed

human values.

Zakir Sahib personifies those values of

Urdu and Dehlavi culture, which are

now to be found only in books. He is,

undoubtedly, one of the finest translators

from Urdu into English. All his life he

has shunned social recognition.

Contents

Introduction

Translator’s Note

The Last Gathering Preface: By Munshi Agha Mirza

Description of the King’s Palace

Notes

Preface: By Ashraf Subuhi

Acknowledgements

About the Translator

Introduction

It was just after the end of the Mughal era that Munshi Faizuddin wrote Bazm-i Aakhir about life and day-to-day activities in the Red Fort, concentrating particularly on the daily life of Bahadur Shah Zafar. The exact time of the completion of the manuscript is not known but it was published in 1885 and one can assume from the available evidence that the book was published immediately after its completion. It is a rich and lively account, and also presents some information that is perhaps not available anywhere else.

The purpose of the book was to record information that very few authors possessed in the specific context. It should be read as a treasure trove of information without worrying unduly about the finer points of grammar and language. What makes the book valuable is the intimate tone, the meticulous details and the loving description of royal protocols.

The Mughals, particularly the later Mughals, are much maligned characters of our history, particularly in the twenty-first century. If the earlier Mughals are traduced as anti-Hindu tyrants, the later ones are routinely derided as powerless, pleasure-seeking and hedonistic. However, they were not quite what they are believed to be. The Mughals, to the very last, were highly intelligent, cultured and sophisticated. It is a British fiction that since the later Mughals were no good, a vacuum was created that the English Company was obliged to step in and fill.

I am not a great admirer of Bahadur Shah Zafar and he deserves no respect for his or his forefathers’ lifestyle as portrayed in Bazm-i Aakhir, but politicians in our times are worse than these medieval kings. Zafar alone cannot be blamed for the culture which had developed over a period of time and was not exclusive to Muslim rulers. Zafar, nonetheless, is an important chapter of Indian history, actually the harbinger of a new era. Anyway, I would leave it to a historian to debate his persona in perspective.

Translator’s Note

Bazm-i Aakhir is an Urdu text comprising 66 printed pages. Therefore, its translation should not have posed any challenge for a person who has been writing for almost forty years. Since I have translated the first authentic work on Bahadur Shah Zafar (Hay House, 2017) into English from Urdu, without it posing any challenge, it should have proved particularly easy to tackle Bazm-i Aakhir, because it is about the time when Bahadur Shah Zafar ruled at the Red Fort in Delhi. Yet it proved to be quite a complex text to translate. I have reasonably good knowledge of Urdu, because it is my mother tongue and I was brought up in the literary culture of Urdu, and can also claim to have some sense of Persian to the extent that if it is used in an Urdu text, I can understand it with the help of dictionaries. So, with some occasional help, I can read and understand any Urdu prose text of the nineteenth century, composed in Delhi or Lucknow. The language of Bazm-i Aakhir does not fall in the category of old Urdu and the author of the book is not a scholar of high calibre. He uses the prefix ‘Munshi’ which had many connotations but was also used for people who could read and write clerical, official documents in Urdu with facility. They were generally not known for their depth of learning. But it is important to note that the author lived in Qila-i Mualla, the Red Fort. Mughal kings and princes generally surrounded themselves with people of high literary calibre, though everyone did not necessarily fall in the category of Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq (1788–1854) or Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869). Bahadur Shah Zafar’s reign is one of the most glorious periods in the development of Urdu, especially Urdu poetry.

While these may be considered sufficient reasons to translate Bazm-i Aakhir into English, the project itself turned into a two-year-long nightmare for me. I discarded the first draft of the translation after many revisions, dissatisfied with certain tricky passages. I requested a wellestablished translator friend to read and revise the second draft of the translation. He is knowledgeable in Urdu and is a master of English language and literature; he did his best, but the result was not as accurate a translation as could be desired. I must record my gratitude to him without mentioning his name since his sincere efforts to help me came