Hazaar Rang Shaairi: The Wonderful World of the Urdu Nazm

By Anisur Rahman

The nazm, with its highly intricate varieties, voices, variations, and vicissitudes, is a profound poetic form with a fascinating history. Compiled comprehensively for the first time, this collection presents the best of Urdu nazms from the sixteenth century to present times. Selected, edited, and translated by Anisur Rahman, the one hundred and forty nazms in the book trace the evolution of the form right from its roots in the Deccan to various geographies across South Asia where it flourished and acquired its plurality. The dazzling English translations published along with their transliterated originals make for a pleasurable and illuminating reading. Hazaar Rang Shaairi: The Wonderful World of the Urdu Nazm is a book for everyone who is curious about how poetry colours our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Dec 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9789356293908

Anisur Rahman

Anisur Rahman is a bilingual poet in English and Urdu, translator and literary critic. Formerly a Professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi, and Senior Advisor at Rekhta Foundation, the world's largest website on Urdu language, literature, and culture, he has worked and published in the areas of comparative, translation, postcolonial, and Urdu studies. He has to his credit six books authored by him, five edited/co-edited volumes, and two collections of Urdu poetry in English translation. His most recent publications include Earthenware: Sixty Poems (Rubric Publishing, 2018), In Translation: Positions and Paradigms (Orient Blackswan, 2019), Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi: The Wonderful World of Urdu Ghazals (HarperCollins, 2019) and Socioliterary Cultures in South Asia (Niyogi Books, 2019). Rahman has been a Shastri Fellow at the University of Alberta, Canada (2001-2002) and a Visiting Scholar at Purdue University, USA (2007).  

Book preview

In memory of

Ammi Abba Obaid

tuul khe.nchaa hai yahaa.n tak shab-e tanhaaii ne

–Sheikh Mehdi Hussain Nasiri Lucknowi

(1885–1931)

the night of loneliness has stretched this far

Translation: Anisur Rahman

Sad jalva ruu-ba ruu hai jo mizhgaa.n uThaaiiye

Taaqat kahaa.n ke diid kaa ehsaa.n uThhaaiiye

Asadullah Khan Ghalib

(1797–1869)

If one raises one’s eyelashes, there are a hundred sights of being

But do the eyes have the strength to bear the delights of seeing

Translation: Anisur Rahman

Gulshan mei.n phiruu.n ke sair-e sahraa dekhuu.n

Yaa m’aadan-o koh-o dasht-o dariyaa dekhuu.n

Har jaa tirii qudrat ke hai.n laakho.n jalve

Hairaan huu.n do aa.nkhon se kyaa kyaa dekhuu.n

Mir Babar Ali Anis

(1803–1874)

Shall I walk the gorgeous gardens, or only watch the wondrous wilds?

Shall I admire the magic mines, or only marvel at the heightened hills?

Shall I wonder at the daunting deserts, or only adore the rising river?

You have a million signs to show, I wonder what the two eyes can see

Translation: Anisur Rahman

CONTENTS

Foreword

Urdu Nazm

Frames of Reference

POEMS

Making a Tradition

1. Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah

2. Vali Deccani

3. Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda

4. Mir Taqi Mir

5. Nazeer Akbarabadi

6. Mir Ghulam Hasan

7. Mir Babar Ali Anis

Towards Modernism

8. Mohammad Husain Azad

9. Altaf Hussain Hali

10. Ismail Merathi

11. Akbar Allahabadi

12. Mohammad Iqbal

13. Brij Narayan Chakbast

14. Josh Malihabadi

15. Tasadduq Hussain Khalid

16. Mohammad Deen Taseer

Progressive Poetics

17. Makhdoom Mohiuddin

18. Faiz Ahmad Faiz

19. Asrarul Haq Majaz

20. Moin Ahsan Jazbi

21. Ali Sardar Jafri

22. Kaifi Azmi

23. Sahir Ludhianavi

New Poetics

24. N.M. Rashed

25. Meeraji

26. Majeed Amjad

27. Akhtarul Iman

28. Mukhtar Siddiqi

29. Munibur Rehman

30. Jilani Kamran

31. Ibn-e Insha

32. Khalilur Rehman Azmi

33. Mohammad Alvi

34. Muneer Niazi

35. Ameeq Hanfi

36. Balraj Komal

37. Qazi Saleem

38. Mohammad Salim-ur-rahman

39. Zubair Rizvi

40. Kumar Pashi

41. Shahryar

Beyond New Poetics

42. Adil Mansoori

43. Zahid Dar

44. Saqi Farooqi

45. Iftekhar Jalib

46. Ahmed Hamesh

47. Nida Fazli

48. Abbas Athar

49. Ain Rasheed

50. Afzal Ahmad Syed

51. Sarmad Sehbai

52. Asghar Nadeem Syed

53. Sarwat Hussain

54. Saiduddin

55. Zeeshan Sahil

56. Mustafa Arbab

Womanist/Feminist Poetics

57. Ada Jafarey

58. Sajida Zaidi

59. Zahida Zaidi

60. Zehra Nigah

61. Kishwar Naheed

62. Fahmida Riaz

63. Shaista Habib

64. Nasreen Anjum Bhatti

65. Azra Abbas

66. Perveen Shakir

67. Fatima Hasan

68. Sara Shagufta

69. Tanveer Anjum

70. Ishrat Afreen

URDU POEMS

Transliteration Key

Translator’s Note

Shukriya

About the Book

About the Translator

Praise for Hazaar Rang Shaairi

Copyright

FOREWORD

The translation called good has original value as a work of art.

– Benedetto Croce (1866–1952)

Anisur Rahman has had a long and distinguished career as an academic, literary critic, editor, translator, anthologist and a poet in English and Urdu. I had the pleasure of publishing a number of his translations of modern Urdu poetry in the Journal of South Asian Literature (26:1-2, 1991) which later appeared in his much-lauded Fire and the Rose: An Anthology of Modern Urdu Poetry (Rupa & Co., 1995). That anthology started with the early twentieth century poet-innovators and presented a panoramic view of modern Urdu poetry with forty-five poets and their most representative poems. Given the positive reception which this volume of modern Urdu poetry received, Rahman turned his thoughts back in literary time. He published Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi: The Wonderful World of Urdu Ghazals (HarperCollins, 2019) where he turned to the timeless Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869) for the first part of his title. May this be added that anyone who attempts to translate poetry ought to have that Ghalib couplet memorized which Rahman has ably translated: ‘Desires in thousands I had, for each I would die/With many I had luck, for many I would sigh’. Indeed, every translator is likely to have his/her hits and misses—‘luck’ and ‘sighs’—but I submit that in that volume of ghazals, as well as in this volume of nazms we have been presented with ‘many’ more hits than usual where Rahman has ‘had luck’.

Coming fast on the heels of the previous volume, Rahman brings us now to the first comprehensive selection of Urdu nazms in English translation. His all-inclusive introduction to this volume, ‘Urdu Nazm: Frames of Reference’ and his ‘Translator’s Note’ would be particularly helpful to the reader. While in the former, he engages with the idea of the ‘nazm’ and the plethora of the types and sub-types of this category of verse, in the latter he justifiably states that his objective for preparing this volume is to provide the reader a larger view of the multiple traditions of Urdu poetry that developed and matured over the last five centuries. As important as the other features of the volume are his biographical-cum-critical notes on poets that would help the reader in contextualizing them in literary and historical contexts to which they belong.

To create a context for the poets that follow, Rahman puts them into six major sections where he defines the main features of each age and the poets who represented them. The titles of the six sections into which the span of Urdu poetry is divided are helpful signposts to what should be expected in each section. The first (‘Making a Tradition’) lays the foundation of the book and shows us how Urdu and its poetry developed in the Deccan during the sixteenth century before moving towards various centres in the north where it flourished. It was also the period, Rahman notes, surely with a smile, when the poet ‘emerged as a cultivated being even though he might have lived in penury’. With this, he brings us to the second section (‘Towards Modernism’) which draws upon the latter part of the nineteenth century when poets and social reformers looked forward and sought to introduce new issues into poetry which could have a didactic function of uplifting the Muslim community. While in the third section (‘Progressive Poetics’) he features Urdu’s foremost Marxism-oriented poets, in the fourth section (‘New Poetics’) he focusses upon their contemporaries who came together as a group called Halqa-i-Arbab-e Zauq (Circle of Connoisseurs) and proposes a contrastive discourse on art and life. Here, poems range widely from the introspective and calm verses to the exuberant and unconventional poetry. Subsequently, he takes us to the fifth section (‘Beyond New Poetics’) which projects the postmodernists. In terms of their exposure to the reading public, their works are sometimes overshadowed by the poets from the two preceding eras and, as a result, have escaped the critical eye of other translators. In the sixth section (‘Womanist/ Feminist Poetics’), devoted exclusively to women poets, he seems to suggest—at least to me—a distinction between ‘Womanists’, poets who happen to be women and address the broad, anticipated, and general ‘concerns’ of women (love, marriage, family, children, spouses), and the group of women who not only share these concerns, but are also actively, and often loudly, engaged in political, social, economic, and even religious issues. All the sections, in totality, present a trajectory of Urdu poetry which is chronological, critical, as also based on the exacting principles of literary historiography.

This volume presents seventy major poets representing six literary periods spread over the last five centuries. The poems chosen for this volume are illustrative of both the poets’ oeuvre as well as the literary periods. In some cases, the poems are among the author’s most famous and already exist in other English translations. In such instances, one is immediately tempted to compare them and return to his translations with pleasure. In other cases, a poem may not be a poet’s most famous, or often-translated poem, yet it is representative of his or her work. Keeping in mind the quote by the Italian philosopher and aesthetician Benedetto Croce that ‘The translation called good has original value as a work of art’, one must ask in closing: What have I learnt? Well, to start with, Urdu poetry does, in fact, contain millions of metaphors which is only too well borne out by the poems selected for this volume. The breadth and depth of this body of literature is as vast as it is profound, and is highly complex in its varieties, voices, variations, and vicissitudes—observations which are neither new nor overstated. And despite the ill-conceived efforts by some misdirected souls to slow it down, or to marginalize it, Urdu literature will progress well in this century, and at least five hundred more to follow, with dynamism, and innovation. It is hoped that the future ages will also have translators with the talent, knowledge, imagination and stamina to bring Urdu poetry not only into English, as here, but other languages as well. This book does not merely contain translations of poems but to apply Croce’s view, these translations, in and of themselves, are original, valuable works of art.

Carlo Coppola

Professor Emeritus of Urdu-Hindi

Professor Emeritus of Linguistics,

Oakland University, USA

URDU NAZM

Frames of Reference

How do we appraise a literary harvest that has been rich in many respects and has been critically acclaimed for its multiple merits? In the particular context of Urdu poetry, this question may be answered with reference to the processes involved in the mellowing of creative imagination, refinement of poetic diction, development of poetical forms and the emergence of poetical composition as literary product. We may appreciate the merit of this literary capital, which is more than five centuries old now, with reference to multiple modes of representation, numerous poetical forms and the phenomenon of impact and response through various phases of sociocultural histories. These are elucidated here in the following sections.

Multiple Modes of Representation

Urdu poetry is clearly divisible into two parts: Ghazal and nazm. While Ghazal is a collection of at least four or five she’rs (broadly called couplets), in a given rhyme scheme and metrical order, nazm is a regular poem that is extremely diverse in its form and content. This volume presents a comprehensive view of the Urdu nazm in all its amazing variety, from its very beginnings in the sixteenth century to the present times.

‘Nazm’ is an Arabic word which, as a noun, means arrangement, order or regulation and, as a verb, it implies an act of stringing together, maybe of beads or pearls. Nazm also means verse, or poetry, which, interestingly enough, is also born out of an act of stringing, not of beads or pearls but of words. Metaphorically speaking, words are the beads, or pearls, which the poet strings together in the larger body of a poem, in as many ways and forms as desired. As literary history shows, Urdu poetry developed in different forms and styles after the Arabic and Persian models. While in one way it developed in the form of individual she’rs without a thematic unity which led to the formation of the Ghazal, in another it developed in the form of short and long stanzas with a thematic unity which led to the formation of a regular poem called nazm. As the nazm developed and acquired a distinct identity, it also found different forms for itself. Alphabetically speaking, these include giit, hajv, hamd, mad’ha, manqabat, marsiya, masnavii, munaajaat, n’aat, nauha, pahelii, qasiida, qavvaalii, reKHtii, salaam, sehra, shahr aashob, soz, vaasoKHt, etc. Apart from these, there are other kinds of nazm which can be identified with the metrical order they follow. These include a huge variety of compositions like dohaa, haiku, muKHammas, murabb’a, musaddas, musallas, musamman, musammat, mustazaad, qit’a, rubaa’ii, sonnet and tazmiin. Let us categorize them to mark their essential features and to appreciate how this remarkable variety constitutes the larger corpus of Urdu nazm which this volume projects.

(a) Religious Representations: Hamd, Munaajaat, N’aat, Manqabat, Marsiya, Nauha, Salaam, Soz

It has been rather customary in the Islamic culture to begin an act with the praise of God. A nazm that praises God is known as a hamd. It is a hymn that delineates the greatness of the Almighty and shows the poet’s reverence for Him. While the hamd is composed as an independent nazm, it is also composed as a kind of preface to longer poetical narratives. Close to this is the nazm of supplication known as munaajaat as it implores God and seeks His mercy and forgiveness. Quite in keeping with the sociocultural and literary tradition, the praise of God is followed by the praise of Muhammad, the last prophet of Islam. A nazm written to praise him is known as n’aat. This, too, is written either independently or as a part of a longer poetical narrative.

After the praise of the Almighty and His last prophet, there has been a tradition to praise Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad. Manqabat is a nazm that praises Ali and the other revered imams. Manqabats have also been written to praise the caliphs and other pious men of God. A major form of the Urdu nazm is the marsiya, which is essentially an elegy written to mourn the death of a person. Many poets have written marsiyas but it acquired a definite identity only with Mir Babar Ali Anis (1802–74). The marsiyas of Anis vividly describe the conditions of a painful parting while setting out for the battle of Karbala against the army of Yezid on the banks of the Euphrates, the ordeals of a long journey, the painful events in the battlefield, the suffering of Imam Husain, the misery of his companions and the martyrdom of all seventy-two of them. It is essentially an oral narrative written as an elegy on the martyrdom of Imam Husain and his relatives and companions. What distinguishes the marsiya of Anis is that apart from mourning, it reflects upon the meaning of martyrdom, the philosophy of human existence and the struggle of good against evil. As a long narrative, a marsiya begins and matures through eight stages: chehra (initiation), saraapaa (disposition), ruKHsat (departure), aamad (arrival), rajz (exhortation), jang (war), shahaadat (martyrdom) and bayn (lamentation). These stages traditionally punctuate the narrative of marsiya even though they are not necessarily followed in this sequence by all poets as a matter of rule. In Urdu, Anis and Mirza Salamat Ali Dabeer (1803–75) perfected the art of marsiya writing to the extent that they are still mentioned as the unsurpassed canon holders of this form. In this context, a mention must also be made of the other kinds of nazm like the nauha, soz and salaam that constitute parts of the larger scheme of majlis, a religious congregation, to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Husain. Nauha is a nazm of lamentation over the martyrdom of the holy imams. Quite akin to the nauha is the soz, which is a dirge written to mourn the dear departed ones at Karbala. What differentiates a soz from a nauha is that the nauha is accompanied by maatam, a passionate act of breast-beating, while the soz is performed without this. Salaam is yet another kind of nazm written in the praise of Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husain, who are known collectively as panj-e tan paak, the pious five.

(b) Secular Narratives: Mad’ha, Masnavii, Qasiida, Shahr Aashob

Urdu has had a long tradition of narrative poetry. Many poets in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have made significant contributions to the evolution and development of secular poetical narratives. In this category, we have a kind of nazm known as the mad’ha which eulogizes a human subject or the broader facets of nature. Apart from this, the masnavii and the qasiida are the two secular narratives that have gained greater attention than others. Masnavii is usually a long nazm akin to romance. It is a way of telling stories or projecting ideas that may have a deep relevance to the understanding of life. It may be about love, romance, ethics, philosophy or natural and supernatural conditions. As it is episodic in nature, it maintains a sense of continuity and keeps the readers’ curiosity alive throughout the narration. A number of poets have written masnaviis but the major ones include Mir Ghulam Hasan (1737–86), Daya Shankar Naseem (1811–45), Khwaja Altaf Hussain Hali (1837–1914) and Hafeez Jalandhari (1900–82), among many others.

While the masnavii presupposes a larger readership with respect to its subject matter, the qasiida, or panegyric, is a person-specific nazm as it is written with the intention to eulogize and idealize an individual. There are two kinds of qasiidas: KHitaabiya (declamatory) and tamhiidiya (invocative or prefatory). In the KHitaabiya kind, the poet begins by directly eulogizing his subject without any introduction or invocation, whereas in the tamhiidiya kind, the poet begins by first preparing a ground and a condition before praising his subject. This introductory part could be devoted to describing the beauty of a season or portraying the condition of love and romance or even sermonizing. These actually determine the nature of the qasiida. Usually, a longer qasiida begins and matures through five stages: tashbiib (initiation), gurez (transition), mad’ha (eulogy), mudd’aa (intention) and du’aa (prayer). While the Arabic qasiida was essentially eulogistic, the Persian qasiida was too exaggerated and the Urdu one too exuberant. As the nature of the qasiida demanded, the poets who practised it were expected to excel in diction, description and declamation. Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda (1713–81), Ghulam Hamadani Mus’hafi (1751–1824), Shaikh Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq (1789–1854) and Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869) have been some of its best practitioners.

At a remove from both the masnavii and qasiida, we have yet another kind of secular narrative in the shahr aashob. It is a nazm that delineates the miseries of an age, place or people. It is a kind of poet’s response to the downfall of values and general insensitivity to the suffering of the people. Many Urdu poets have recorded their anguish in this kind of a nazm. Precisely, it is a kind of elegy on a certain age, place and people which the poet finds decadent, spoiled or ravaged because of the onslaughts of time and the decay of values. Jafar Zatalli (d. 1713), Shakir Naji (1690–1744), Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810) and Mohammad Rafi Sauda have been the important practitioners of the shahr aashob.

(c) Cultural Configurations: Giit, Qavvaalii, Sehra, Hajv, VaasoKHt, ReKHtiiii

The cultural life of a people gets manifested in myriad ways through literature and the arts. There are several ways in poetry through which human sentiments and aspirations are expressed. Giit, or song, is one of them. It has been in existence in all languages since ancient times. Joy and suffering, being the two seasons of life, find their best expression in giit. It is a repository of human aspirations and is meant to be sung either individually or by a group, with or without music. Some of the best moments of love and folk life are preserved in giit, which may be appreciated best as a secular song of life. Poets like Hafeez Jalandhari (1900–82) and Meeraji (1912–49) created the most appropriate kinds of rhythm to compose giit. Another major manifestation of culture may be found in the qavvaalii. It is a musical composition and is meant to be sung by a group of singers from a platform using music instruments. As it moves from word to performance, it becomes a mode of musical performance which receives great applause from the audience. It is sung at shrines and cultural soirees to groups of devoted listeners who are known to enter a state of rapture, or trance, once they are possessed by a condition of spiritual ecstasy. Traditionally, a qavvaalii performance begins with a hamd followed by a n’aat and then only does it go on to secular compositions which are drawn from a variety of poets whose compositions the singers choose to sing and perform. Yet another cultural marker, which is either read out or sung individually, is the sehra. It is a wedding song written to praise the groom, his parents, relatives and the groom’s headgear made of flowers. Since it is essentially a ceremonial composition and has had a ritualistic value, it has not been practised much, although prominent poets like Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Shaikh Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq and Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775–1862) have written sehras for bridegrooms.

Apart from the compositions like the giit, qavvaalii and sehra, which are meant to be sung, we have the hajv, the vaasoKHt and the reKHtiii, in which the poets proudly parade their verbal dexterity. These three kinds of nazms represent yet another dimension of a culture. The hajv, which is similar to the satire and lampoon, is a poem that shows utter displeasure for a person, condition or institution. It depends on sharp wit for its impact and expresses the poet’s rage against the chosen victim. This victim is severely criticized, cursed and castigated. It could be the result of jealousy but not necessarily of ill will. It underlines the human tendency to find fault with others. Mohammad Rafi Sauda has been the most prominent practitioner of the hajv even though Mir Taqi Mir, Ghulam Hamadani Mus’hafi, Insha Allah Khan Insha (1753–1817) and Qalandar Bakhsh Jurat (1749–1809) have also practised it in their individual styles. Yet another manifestation of a culture is found in the vaasoKHt and the reKHtii. The vaasoKHt is an example of the poetry of pretence. It describes a lover’s passion for his beloved followed by his displeasure at her indifference and infidelity, which finally leads him to seek refuge in an imaginary love. This pretence on the part of the lover makes way for reconciliation. The vaasoKHt is dialogic, dramatic and idiomatic in its essential make-up. Amanat Lucknowi (1815–58) has been acknowledged as the most prominent practitioner of the vaasoKHt, although other important poets like Mohammad Rafi Sauda, Mir Taqi Mir and Imam Bakhsh Nasikh (1771–1838) have also practised it. Falling in line with the vaasoKHt is the reKHtii, in which female sentiments are expressed through the male voice. It uses language and gesture as subterfuge. The theme and tone of voice are characteristically those of the harem, or the inner courtyard. The reKHtii was not considered a respectable form of poetry in the so-called decent circles but it certainly added a new and unusual voice to Urdu poetry, which has been a subject of critical attention in the modern times. Insha Allah Khan Insha and Saadat Yar Khan Rangeen (1756–1835), apart from a host of others, have been the two most prominent practitioners of this kind of poetry.

(d) Metrical Constructions: Dohaa, Musallas, Murabb’a, MuKHammas, Musaddas, Musamman, Musammat, Rubaa’ii, Qit’a, Mustazaad, Tazmiin, Sonnet, Haiku

Poetry in Urdu owes much to music. This sense of the musical is drawn largely from a keen perception of the metre and its strict and artful use in creating a line with a sense of rhythm. Adherence to rhyming words, recurrent end rhymes, equal number of syllables and internal rhythm are some of the more prominent tools in the hands of the poets that help create a sense of the musical in their poems. We may consider the dohaa, musallas, murabb’a, muKHammas, musaddas, musamman and musammat under one category, as they are clearly distinguishable with respect to their fixed metrical structure. The dohaa is a composition of two lines that has been practised in Urdu as in Braj, Hindi, Sindhi and Punjabi. A proper Urdu dohaa is based on the forty-eight syllables of Prakrit and Apbhransha, in which both the lines maintain the same rhyming words and every line uses twenty matras. It is written on a variety of themes like love, nature, morality, faith, human relationships and almost every other experience that matters in life.

Among the other forms, while the musallas is a composition where each stanza is composed of three lines, the murabb’a is yet another kind of a composition in which each stanza has four lines. Similarly, in a progressive order, the muKHammas is a composition of stanzas with five lines each, while the musaddas is a composition in which each stanza is of six lines. Comparatively, the musaddas has been a more popular form of poetry. Further, the musamman is a composition that has eight lines in each stanza and the musammat is a composition of several stanzas put together following any of the forms of muKHammas, murabb’a, musaddas or musamman.

The examples of Rubaa’ii, qit’a, mustazaad, tazmiin, sonnet and haiku fall in a different category as they follow different structural principles. The Rubaa’ii, which must follow a definite metre, is a short