*Mushafi Amrohvi*

In the major languages of Central Asia — Arabic, Persian, and Urdu — the poet and writer from India who rendered the most scholarly and practical service to the linguistic and literary development was Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi. The land of Amroha can take endless pride in this son.

Mushafi was a literary researcher and poet whose contributions cover the last two and a half centuries of literary history. Mushafi was the first historian of literature who, in 1780, first identified Urdu as a language through his poetry. Not only did Mushafi recognize Urdu as a distinct language, he also formally initiated _tazkirah-nigari_ [biographical anthology writing] in Urdu. This was a unique form of _tazkirah_ writing that proved to be foundational for literary criticism in Urdu.

In his works _Tazkirah-e-Hindi_, Mushafi presented accounts of 188, and in _Riyaz-ul-Fusaha_ of 322, Persian-Urdu poets. Moreover, the critical commentary he made on the poetry of these poets is itself a superb example of literary insight and vision. It was on the literary foundations laid by Mushafi that the edifice of future literary scholarship was built.

He was born on 19 April 1748 in a respectable family of Mohalla Darbar Siyan, Amroha. His father’s name was Sheikh Wali Mohammad. Mushafi received his early education in Amroha and spent 23 years of his life there. It was a very turbulent period in India. The problems of unemployment and the city’s financial constraints made the life of a sensitive poet a test of endurance. 

Mushafi, too, stepped out of Amroha in search of livelihood, and from 1771 to 1774 he lived in Tanda and Lucknow. Then he came to Delhi, where along with employment he pursued higher studies in Arabic and Persian. During his stay in Delhi, the renowned poets Mushafi met included Khwaja Mir Dard, Mazhar Jan-e-Janan, and Mir Anees’s grandfather, Mir Hasan.

Among Mushafi’s most important disciples were such names as Khwaja Haider Ali Atish, Nasikh Lucknawi, Mir Halik, Rangeen, Barq Dehlvi, Mir Zamir, Chunna Lal Dilgeer, Bani, Shaheed, Zareef, and Imam Bakhsh — whose mention forms a golden chapter in the history of Urdu.

Dr. Nurul Hasan Naqvi got Mushafi Amrohvi’s Urdu diwans published by the Government of India’s Sahitya Akademi between 1968 and 1999, which became an invaluable literary treasure of Mushafi’s works. Mushafi displayed his mastery of poetry in every genre — his distinct style is evident in qasida, marsiya, and ruba’i — but fundamentally, Mushafi was a poet of the ghazal.