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Shabbīr Ḥasan Khān Josh Malīḥābādī (d. 22 February 1982) was an Urdu writer remembered for his tell-all autobiography as well as for his anticlerical, anti-imperial, nationalist, revolutionary, and romantic poetry. 1. Life Josh was born on 5 December 1894, 1896, or 1898 (the sources differ) at Malīḥābād, British India into a wealthy family of landowners whose ancestors had come from near Kabul to India in the twelfth/eighteenth century to join the army of Ṣafdar Jang (nawab of Awadh, r. 1152–67/1739–54). His paternal great-gra…

Mirzā Farḥat Allāh Beg (b. c.1886, d. 1947) was an Urdu humorist, biographer, historian, literary critic, critical editor, and official in Hyderabad. 1. Life Much of what is known about Farḥat Allāh’s life comes from his own writings, including a lengthy autobiography, Merī dāstān (“My story,” published posthumously), and from accounts by those who knew him (see Yazdānī). He was the descendant of a family of immigrants from Badakhshān who came to India during the time of the Mughal emperor Shāh ʿĀlam II (r. 1173–1202/1759–88 and 1203–21/…

ʿAbd al-Salām Nadwī (1883–1956) was an Urdu-language biographer, historian, scholar of Islamic studies, journalist, literary critic, and translator. 1. Life He was born on 16 February 1883 in the rural village of Alauddin Patti, Azamgarh district, British India, to a family of landowners. Having studied Persian literature at home, he married, at a young age, the daughter of a respected scholar with ties to Farangī Maḥall, moved into his wife’s home, and completed his study of Persian with his father-in-law, ʿAbdall…

Debate literature in Urdu encompasses a wide range of disputative practices across a similarly wide range of discursive contexts. The word munāẓara (debate) has three relevant senses: public debates amongst religious and sectarian groups and the polemical literatures associated with them; debate as a branch of the rational sciences; and a literary motif used primarily in Urdu poetry involving an imaginary dialogue. Other Urdu words used to designate debate, including mubāḥatha, are introduced as well. 1. The semantics of munāẓara Munāẓara (also pronounced munāẓira, munāẓra; pl.…

Ḥālī is the pen name of Alṭāf Ḥusayn (b. c.1837, d. 1914), an Urdu poet, literary critic, essayist, biographer, educational and social reformer, and translator. Most of what we know about his life, especially early on, comes from an autobiographical sketch that he wrote in 1901, titled Tarjuma-yi Ḥālī (Biographical entry for Ḥālī). The piece was later published in Maqālāt 1:261–70. 1. Life Ḥālī was born in the town of Panipat, about eighty kilometres north of Delhi. By his own claim, his paternal ancestor Malik ʿAlī immigrated to India in the seventh/thirteenth century and was given a jāgīr…

Amīr Aḥmad Amīr Mīnāʾī (1829–1900) was a poet, teacher, lexicographer, biographer, publisher, Islamic scholar, critical editor, and court official at Lucknow and Rāmpūr. He is remembered best for his Urdu ghazals (lyrical poems) and naʿts (poems in praise of the prophet Muḥammad), his biographical dictionary of poets at Rāmpūr, and an incomplete Urdu dictionary. 1. Life Amīr Mīnāʾī was born in Lucknow to a family of mystics and scholars who traced its lineage through the mystic Shāh Mīnā (d. 869/1465 in Lucknow, where his shrine is located)—whence th…

REHATSEK, EDWARD (b. Ilok, 3 July 1819; d. Bombay, 11 December 1891), Hungarian-born Orientalist and translator of a number of Persian and Arabic works.i. Life Edward Rehatsek, the son of a forest inspector, was born in Ilok (now in Croatia). As a child, he was sent to study Magyar in Pécs (Hungary), where he also studied Slavic and German and privately learned French and design. He eventually attended the university in Budapest (now the Budapest University of Technology), where he trained as an engineer and a surveyor…