Forum Pakistan

Ghalib, Mirza Asadullah Khan (17971869)
Poet. Frequently considered the greatest poet in the *Urdu language, in his own time Ghalib was perhaps better known for his works in Persian. He composed his poetry under the poetic pen name of Asad and later of Ghalib. He was orphaned early and brought up by his uncle in Agra. At the age of thirteen, on the decision of his relatives, he married Umrao Begum, daughter of poet Ilahi Baksh Marufi. He moved to Delhi in 1810, where he lived on a meagre pension granted to his uncle by the British Government. After the defeat of the Indian peoples' uprising in 1858, he visited the Nawab of Rampur, who granted him a stipend of Rs 100 a month.

His creative work was influenced by Mirza Abdul Qadir *Bedil (d. 1721) and the traditional school of Persian poetry. At the age of twenty-three Ghalib compiled the first collection of his Urdu poetry, and for the next thirty years continued to write poetry in Persian. In 1828 he published a selection of his Persian and Urdu verse, Guli-Rana. In 1837 he published Kulliayat-i-Nazm-i-Farsi, a collection of his poetry in Farsi. In 1868-69 a collection of his letters, Ud-i-Hindi, and then Urdu-i-Mualla, a larger collection of letters, were published.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: N. Glebov, A Sukhochev, 'Urdu Literature', Moscow, 1967 (in Russian); Ralph Russel, Khurshidul lslam, 'Ghalib: Life and Letters' (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1994; 'Zoe Ansari Ghalib Shanasi', 2 Vols., New Delhi, 1969; 'Nuqoosh, Ghalib Number' 3 Vols., (ed.) M. Tufail, Lahore, 1969; Abdul Latif, 'Ghalib', Hyderabad (Dn.), 1924; Natalia Prigarina, 'Mirza Ghalib: A. Creative Biography, Moscow', 1986.