Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Paula Sanders, Ritual, Politics, and the 

City in Fatimid Cairo (Albany: State University of New 

York Press, 1994), 121–134; John Alden Williams, The 

World of Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 

170–172.

Ghalib, Mirza Asad Ali Khan

 

(1797–1869)  

leading Indo-Pakistani author famed for his Persian 

and Urdu poetry and prose

Ghalib was born into a prominent Muslim fam-

ily closely connected to the court of the m

Ughal

dynasty

 in i

ndia

. He spent his early childhood 

in Agra, the former capital, but at the age of 15 

he moved to d

elhi

, the location of the impe-

rial court, where he lived for most of his life. 

His poetic gifts were recognized by the ruler 

of Awadh in north India and by Bahadur Shah 

II (d. 1857), the last Mughal emperor. Ghalib 

lost his royal patrons (and nearly his life) with 

the great Indian “mutiny” against the British in 

1857, but he soon overcame his financial troubles 

with the help of a pension from the new British 

government in India. He wrote in both Persian, 

the literary language of the elite, and Urdu, the 

“camp” language of the Muslim court. His poetry 

expressed emotions of sorrow and suffering and 

echoed mystical themes, but it was not overtly 

religious. Indeed, he was a humanist in outlook 

who regarded Muslims, Hindus, and Christians as 

brothers. He employed classical Arabic and Per-

sian poetic forms: the 

ghazal

 (love lyric), qasida

(ode), and mathnavi (rhymed couplet). Today, he 

is remembered best for his Urdu poetry, collected 

in his Diwan. He wrote more poetry in Persian, 

however, and this has been collected in his Kul-

liyyat. Among Ghalib’s prose writings are a history 

of the Mughals and essays on the Persian lan-

guage. In 1969, the Ghalib Academy was opened 

to commemorate the centenary of Ghalib’s death. 

It is located in New Delhi near the tomb of the 

Chishti Sufi saint n

izam

 

al

-d

in

 a

Wliya

 (d. 1325) 

and houses a museum and library.

See also p

ersian

 

langUage

 

and

 

literatUre

.