MIRZA GHALIB DEATH ANIVERSARY

Death anniversary of Mirza Ghalib observed

Karachi—Death anniversary classical Urdu and Persian poet Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan Ghalib, was marked here on Wednesday. Mushahira’s and references were held under various literary organizations to pay tributes to legendary poet.

Ghalib was born on December 27, 1796 in the city of Akbarabad (present Agra). He was an all time great classical Urdu and Persian poet of the Indian subcontinent. His full name was “Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan” and “Ghalib” was his pen name.

He wrote several ghazals during his life, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. During his lifetime the Mughals were eclipsed and displaced by the British and finally deposed following the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1857, events that he wrote of. Most notably, he wrote several ghazals during his life, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. He is considered, in South Asia, to be one of the most popular and influential poets of the Urdu language. Ghalib today remains popular not only in India and Pakistan but also amongst diaspora communities around the world.

Mirza Ghalib is considered to be the most dominating poet of the Urdu language. After the death of his father and uncle during his early youth, Ghalib moved to Delhi. 

He was one of the best of Urdu poets who led a drastic revolution in Urdu poetry with his words. Ghalib felt so much proud in his Persian poetry but his Urdu poetry like “Ghazals” are also much famous today. He always lived from hand to mouth due to lack of money and after 1857 his support from Royal darbar stopped. He died in 1869.

Ghalib started composing poetry at the age of 11. His first language was Urdu, but Persian and Turkish were also spoken at home. He got his education in Persian and Arabic at a young age. When Ghalib was in his early teens, a newly converted Muslim tourist from Iran (Abdus Samad, originally named Hormuzd, a Zoroastrian) came to Agra. He stayed at Ghalibs home for 2 years. He was a highly educated individual and Ghalib learned Persian, Arabic, philosophy, and logic from him.

Although Ghalib himself was far prouder of his poetic achievements in Persian, he is today more famous for his Urdu ghazals. Numerous elucidations of Ghalib’s ghazal compilations have been written by Urdu scholars. The first such elucidation or Sharh was written by Ali Haider Nazm Tabatabai of Hyderabad during the rule of the last Nizam of Hyderabad. Before Ghalib, the ghazal was primarily an expression of anguished love; but Ghalib expressed philosophy, the travails and mysteries of life and wrote ghazals on many other subjects, vastly expanding the scope of the ghazal. This work is considered his paramount contribution to Urdu poetry and literature.

In keeping with the conventions of the classical ghazal, in most of Ghalib’s verses, the identity and the gender of the beloved is indeterminate. The critic/poet/writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqui explains that the convention of having the “idea” of a lover or beloved instead of an actual lover/beloved freed the poet-protagonist-lover from the demands of realism. Love poetry in Urdu from the last quarter of the seventeenth century onwards consists mostly of “poems about love” and not “love poems” in the Western sense of the term.