مسلمانوں کے خلاف برمی دارالحکومت کی طرف رہا ۔

ڈرتے تھے کہ غیر مسلح مسلمانوں کو شکار ہجوم مرکزی برمی ٹاؤن کے میاکتالہ سے مزید جنوب، ملک کے دارالحکومت کے نزدیک نیپیادو کے پھیلا دیا ۔

کم از کم 65 سے زائد مکانات اور جانماز انتہا پسند یمیتھان ٹاؤن شپ کے بارے میں 25 میل دور میاکتالہ کے جنوب میں ہے جو میں بودھوں نے جلایا گیا تھا.

بھی اگرچہ اس قصبے میں ایک ہنگامی حالت کا خاتمہ قرار دیا گیا، دیگر قصبوں عسکری حمایت حاصل کیا گیا ہے نہیں ہے ۔ پولیس اور فوجی حکام نے بھی اس میاکتالہ کے دن شہر میں 3 دن کے لئے لے جانے خود میں ابتدائی تشدد کے کام کرنے کے لئے بہت سست رفتار تھے ۔

تشدد اور آتش زنی بھی لیوا اور بہت یانگون کے قریب ملک کا سب سے بڑا شہر ہے جو اوکپا میں اطلاع نہیں ملی ۔

کم سے کم 32 جاں بحق ہیں ۔ بہر حال، نمبر برمی حکومت کے طور پر بہت حد تک بہت زیادہ ہے کہ کسی بھی عوامی معلومات پر سخت کنٹرول رکھتی ہے ۔ ان مرنے والوں کی اکثریت مسلمان ہے ۔

انتہا پسند بودھوں – ان میں سے بعض راہب – تلواریں اور ماچیٹس غیر مسلح مسلمانوں کے لئے شکار کے ساتھ دیکھا گیا تھا. صرف گزشتہ چار دنوں میں 18 جانماز کو تباہ کیا گیا ہے اور مُسلم کمیونٹیز کے کہ پورے علاقے راکھ کو نذر آتش کیا گیا ہے ۔

کم از کم 10000 چھپانے میں، جہاں وہ کر سکتے ہیں تلاش کرنا پناہ ہیں ۔

5 فوری اقدامات کی ضرورت

ہدایت دعا متاثرین برما میں اور نماز کے لئے بھی انتہاپسند بودھوں کو لے کر اس کے تشدد میں حصہ کہ صرف ہو پا جائیں گے ۔

صدر اوبامہ کو وائٹ ہاؤس میں کال کریں اور اسے فوری طور پر کارروائی کرنے کی درخواست کرتا ہے ۔ انہوں نے برمی صدر کے تینسیان کی بات کرتے ہیں اور وہ سب برمی شہری کی حفاظت کی ذمہ داری ہے کہ میں بات کرنے کی ضرورت ہے ۔ (202) 456-1111 ۔

سیکریٹری آف اسٹیٹ جان کیری پر کال کریں اور اسے بتائیں کہ انہوں نے ایک ہی کالوں کے لیے برمی صدر بنانا ضروری ہے ۔ کال (202) 647-5291، پھر دبائیں اختیارات #1 اور پھر اختیار #8 ۔

فون کال کرنے کے لیے لوگوں کے لئے آپ مسجد میں اعلان

آپ کے اپنے ذاتی یا کمیونٹی کی فہرست کے ذریعے انتباہ کے لیے یہ گردش ہیں ۔

ایک ٹیلی فون کال آج کل کرتے ہیں

تشدد پھیلانے کے لیے پہلے سے ہی شروع کیا ہے اور مسلمان پہلے ہی برما بھر میں نشانہ بنایا جا رہا ہیں ۔ اگر امریکہ جلد ہی کام نہیں کرتا تو مسلمانوں کا قتل ہو رہے گا!

ہمارے ادب کی درخواست کریں ۔

اگر آپ اپنے مقامی مسجد یا کمیونٹی سینٹر میں ڈال دیا ہے کے لیے پمفلٹ کی درخواست میں دلچسپی رکھتے ہیں، info@burmamuslims.org کو ایک ای میل بھیجیں ۔ ہم ان کی فرمایش کی ہے کمیونٹیوں کے لئے اس کے لئے پہلے ہی پمفلٹ کی ایک بڑی تعداد باہر بھیجا ہے ۔ رسالھ کہ کیا کیا کام اور عمل آپ، مانگا پر دستخط کرنے اور سفیروں کو فون بنانے لے سکتے ہیں برما ٹاسک فورس ہے برما میں ہورہا ہے کے پر معلومات شامل ہیں ۔

برما ٹاسک فورس اتحادی شراکت داروں

Violence Against Muslims Spreads Toward Burmese Capital

As feared, mobs hunting down unarmed Muslims have spread from the central Burmese town of Meiktila further south, near the country’s capital of Naypyidaw.

At least 65 houses and masjids were burned down by extremist Buddhists in Yemethin Township, which is about 25 miles south of Meiktila.

Although a state of emergency was declared in that town, other towns have not been afforded military support. Police and military officials were also very slow to act in the initial violence, letting it carry on for 3 days in the garrison town of Meiktila.

Violence and arson were also reported in Lewe and Okpo, which is very close to Yangon, the country’s largest city.

At least 32 are reported dead; however, that number is largely much higher, as the Burmese government maintains tight control over any public information. The majority of those dead are Muslim.

Extremist Buddhists – some of them monks – were seen with swords and machetes, on the hunt for unarmed Muslims. Just in the last four days 18 masjids have been destroyed and the whole neighborhoods of Muslim communities have been burned to ashes. 

At least 10,000 are in hiding, finding shelter where they can.

5 Urgent Actions Needed 

1. Pray for the victims in Burma and pray that the extremist Buddhists taking part in this violence will be guided to be just.
2. Call President Obama at the White House and urge him to take immediate action. He needs to speak to Burmese President TheinSein and tell him that he has a responsibility to safeguard ALL Burmese citizens. (202) 456-1111.
3. Call Secretary of State John Kerry and tell him he must make the same calls to the Burmese President. Call (202) 647-5291, then press Option #1 and then Option #8.
4. Announce in your masjid for people to make phone calls
5. Circulate this alert through your personal or community list.

Make a Phone Call TODAY  

The violence has already started to spread, and Muslims are already being targeted throughout Burma. If America doesn’t act soon, Muslims will continue to be massacred!

Request Our Literature!

If you’re interested in requesting pamphlets to put up in your local masjid or community center, send an email to info@burmamuslims.org. We have already sent out a number of pamphlets to communities that have requested them. The pamphlet includes information on what is going on in Burma, what the Burma Task Force is doing and action you can take, such as signing petitions and making phone calls to ambassadors. 

BURMA TASK FORCE  COALITION PARTNERS

کس طرح اردو ہندوستان میں مسلمانوں کے ساتھ وابستہ ہوئی

زبانیں بنیادی طور پر ہیں ذرائع ابلاغ، جذبات، رویہ اور مزاج کا اظہار ہے ۔ لیکن وہ بھی مختلف درجات میں شناخت کے ساتھ منسلک ہیں ۔ شناخت قومیت، ہے sub-nationalistic (نسلی) بھی مذہبی بعض شاذ و نادر صورتوں میں ہے ۔ ہندوستان میں یہ سو ہوا کہ اردو آخر اٹھارویں اور ابتدائی 20thcenturies کے درمیان مسلم شناخت کے ساتھ منسلک ہوئے تھے ۔ اس زبان کو ہندو اور مسلمانوں اور دونوں اپنے آپ کو مسلمانوں کی طرف سے بولتے ہیں اس حقیقت کے باوجود کئی زبانیں، بنیادی طور پر بنگالی، پنجابی، پشتو، سندھی اور گجراتی بولتے ہیں ۔ کے گاؤں میں اس کے علاوہ، اپ اور بہار، ہندوؤں اور مسلمانوں دونوں اصل بات اوادہا، بھوجپورا، برج بھاشا، میتہلی وغیرہ جیسے ہندی کی بولیاں ہیں ۔ اور اس کے باوجود، جدید کے ساتھ وابستہ ہے اسلام ہندوستان میں بھارت اور پاکستان دونوں میں ہے ۔ یہ کیسے ہوا؟ یہ دو حصوں میں بیان کیا جاتا ہے ۔ پہلے حصے کو اردو کی تنظیف بیسویں صدی کے آغاز کے لیے 1750 کے درمیان نقل و حرکت سے متعلق ہے ۔

لسانی صاف کرنے کے لیے تحریک — جس میں 'اسلامائزیشن کے درج ذیل اردو' وجوہات کی بنا پر کال کریں — اٹھارویں صدی کے وسط میں شروع کر دیا ہے ۔ اُردو کا ہندی پر مبنی زبان تھی ۔ کی طرف سے مجھے (بھاکا یا بھاشا) مقامی زبانوں اور سنسکرت کے الفاظ تھے، اور اس اللوسانس بھارت اور مقامی ثقافت کے لئے تھے یہ ہے ۔ اگرچہ بعض تحریروں میں اس زبان کے رسم الخط پارسا عربی (اردو)، خلاف دیونا گری راجپوت کی تحریروں میں استعمال کیا جاتا ہے زبان کی طرح ہے ۔ اس تبدیلی سے 1750 ء کی اس مضمون کا موضوع ہے جو دہائی بعد ۔

یہ تزکیہ تحریک میں دھرمی عنصر باہر جو چاہتے تھے ایک کلاس شناختی نشان انداز یہ ظاہر ہوتا ہے، مسلم شعراء کی طرف سے پاک تھا ۔ ان تبدیلیوں کے درمیان جو ہو گیا تھا: مقامی (بھاکا) اور سانسکراٹاک الفاظ کی برطرفی، ایران اور اسلامی ثقافتی اللوسانس اور میتاپہآرس ہندوستان اور ہندو کی جگہ متبادل اور فارس کی طرف سے محبت (مرد کے لیے عورت) کے اظہار کے بارے میں بھارتی معاہدوں کی متبادل وہ (مرد عورت یا نابالغ لڑکے سے) ۔ چار ہزار سے زائد الفاظ باہر کی صفائی میں نین (آنکھوں کے)، پریم (محبت)، موہن (پیارا ون) وغیرہ تھے ۔ وہ گیتوں اور شاعری کی کسی دوسری شکل میں موجود ہیں، لیکن وہ سے غزل کر جلاوطن کر دیا گیا ہے ۔ جو یہ سب کچھ اس نے شاعروں کی تحریروں میں دی بنیاد — شاہ حاتم جیسے (1699-1786) امام بخش ناسکہ (d. 1838)، انشاء اللہ خان انشاء (1752-1818) وغیرہ، فرقہ وارانہ نہیں ہوتے ۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ بعض الفاظ متروک، انفاشاونبلی اور خراب ہیں ۔ تاہم نتیجہ تھا کہ دھرمی اصل الفاظ ہیں جو خارج کردیا گیا تھا ۔ کہ کیوں میں اس تحریک 'اسلامائزیشن' فون اس کی ایک وجہ ہے ۔ ایک ٹھوس مثال کے طور پر اٹھانے کے لئے، اپنی ضخیم شاعرانہ کام یہ دیوان زادہ (1756) کا مطالبہ کرنے کا ایک چھوٹا سا اقتباس حاتم بنا دیا ہے ۔ کی تمہید میں لکھا اس تالیف میں، اس نے فارسی میں انہوں نے "کا استعمال کرتے ہوئے مقامی کہاوت ہے جو 'بھاکا' کہلاتا تھا گیا تھا کہ" لکھتا ہے (بھاکا گواند ماوقف کاردا) ۔ اس کی جگہ میں نے، وہ دہلی کے حضرات کی بہتر کہاوت شروع ہو گئی تھی بتاتی ہے ۔ اور کیا یہ ہے؟ کو جواب کے لیے ہم نے خاص طور پر اپنے فارسی بوکدآریا-e-لاتفت میں اس کی وضاحت انشاء سے جانا ہے (1802) ۔ انشاء کے لئے یہ دہلی اور لکھنؤ کے مسلمان اشراف کی زبان تھی ۔ امیر خسرو کے اپنے اصولوں کی نمائندگی کرتی اس طرح کے تصورات کے بارے میں لسانی چودھویں صدی سے گردش میں کم از کم ہوسکے ۔ بہر حال، 1750 ء کی دہائی کے دوران سراج علی خان ارزو (1687-1756) ایک فارسی شاعر اور لسانیات، کے نظریات حاتم اور دوسرے اصلاح پر ایک طاقتور اثر تھا ۔ ارزو اسے ناوادیر الفاز نام ایک موجودہ لغت کو صحیح کر دیا (1751) ۔ اس میں انہوں نے کئی جگہوں پر کہ معیاری زبان ذہن میں تھا کہ دہلی کے اشراف کی تھی ہے. اور یہ محاورہ کہیں زیادہ پرساانیس اور دیگر علاقوں میں بولی جانے والی زبان کے دیگر سٹائل سے اسلامی ثقافتی حوالے سے بھرا تھا ۔ تو اس نے اس پرساانیس زبان ہے جو تعلیم یافتہ اور زیادہ تر مسلمان لیکن کا نشان بھی ہندو کایسٹہ, برطانوی ہند کے دوران کی شناخت بن گیا تھا ۔

یہ شمالی ہندوستان کی مشترکہ زبان کی شناخت کے لیے دو زبانیں کہ تبدیلی اس تحریک کا اثر ہوا: پرساانیس اردو اور ہندی میں سانسکراٹید ہے ۔ بعد 1802 سے سانسکراٹاسشن کا عمل شروع ہوا اور یہ سیاسی شعور، انسپینٹ قوم پرستی اور مسلمان ثقافتی غلبہ ردعمل کا نتیجہ تھا ۔ لیکن یہ برتری میں کردار ادا کیا گیا تھا ۔ تاکہ اسلامی محاورہ میں استعمال کرنے کے لئے ایک ہندو شاعر نے اردو کی اسلامائزیشن کی اسی تحریک کی طرف سے ہو تعریف کرنے کا حکم ہے ۔ اور نظرانداز کرتا ستم ظریفی یہ ہے اور سب سے زیادہ ناحق آزاد کی کتاب آب حیات دونوں ہندو شاعروں طور ہے ابھی تک, ۔ کوئی شک نہیں تھا کہ پرساانیسشن کے اس عمل سے باہر ایک خود مختار راہ حملہ کرنے بجائے ایرانیوں نے ہندوستانی فارسی کا مذاق بنا دیا جیسا کہ فارسی زبان میں ہی لکھنے کے لئے کا مطلب ایک کلاس کی تحریک ہے ۔ کی شکل میں اس کے علاوہ، 1830 ء کی دہائی سے آگے، فارسی طاقت کے ڈومین سے لائیں کیا جا رہا تھا ہے ۔ مسلمانوں اور کایسٹہ منشاس کے پرساانیس اردو میں ملازمتوں پر اپنی اجارہ داری برقرار رکھنے کے لئے استعمال میں دلچسپی تھی اور پنجاب ۔ لیکن ویں

How Urdu got associated with Muslims in India

Languages are basically a means of communication, expression of emotion, attitude and mood. But they are also associated with identity in various degrees. Identity is nationalistic, sub-nationalistic (ethnic) and, in some rare cases, also religious. In India, it so happened that Urdu got associated with the Indian-Muslim identity between the late 18th and the early 20thcenturies. Despite the fact that this language is spoken by both Hindus and Muslims and Muslims themselves speak a number of languages, mainly Bengali, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Gujrati. Moreover, in the villages of UP and Bihar, both Hindus and Muslims actually speak the dialects of Hindi such as Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Maithili etc. And yet, modern is associated with Islam in India in both India and Pakistan. How did this happen? This is explained in two parts. The first part deals with the movement for the purification of Urdu between 1750 to the early 1900s.
The movement for linguistic purification — which I call the ‘Islamisation of Urdu’ for reasons given below — started in the middle of the 18th century. The ancestor of Urdu was an Indic-oriented language. By this I mean that it had words of the local languages (bhaka or bhasha) and Sanskrit, and its allusions were to India and the local culture. Even though the script of some writings in this language is Perso-Arabic (Urdu), as opposed to Devanagari used in the Rajput writings, the language is similar. This change from the 1750s onwards which is the theme of this article.
In this purification movement, the Indic element was purged out by Muslim poets who, it appears, wanted a class-identity marker. Among the changes which occurred were: the removal of local (bhaka) and Sanskritic words, the substitution of Iranian and Islamic cultural allusions and metaphors in place of Indian and Hindu ones, and the replacement of the Indian conventions about the expression of love (woman to man) by Persian ones (man to woman or adolescent boy). Among the more than 4,000 words purged out were nain (eye),prem (love), mohan (dear one) etc. They do exist in songs and some other forms of poetry, of course, but they were banished from the ghazal. The grounds given in the writings of the poets who did all this — such as Shah Hatim (1699-1786), Imam Baksh Nasikh (d. 1838), Insha Ullah Khan Insha (1752-1818), etc — are not communal. They said that certain words are obsolete, unfashionable and rough. However, the end result was that words of Indic origin were the ones which were purged. That is one reason why I call this movement ‘Islamisation’. To take one concrete example, Hatim made a small extract of his voluminous poetic work calling it Divan Zada (1756). In the preface of this compilation, he writes in Persian that he “had stopped using the local idiom which was called ‘bhaka’” (bhaka goend mauquf karda). In its place, he tells us, he had started the refined idiom of the gentlemen of Delhi. And what was this? For an answer we have to go to Insha who defined it precisely in his Persian bookDarya-e-Latafat (1802). For Insha, this was the language of the Muslim elite of Delhi and Lucknow. Such notions about linguistic excellence were in circulation from the 14th century at least, as Amir Khusro’s own notions illustrate. However, during the 1750s the ideas of Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzu (1687-1756), a Persian poet and linguist, had a stronger impact on Hatim and the other reformers. Arzu corrected an existing dictionary naming it Navadir-ul- Alfaz (1751). In this he indicates at several places that the standard language he had in mind was that of the elite of Delhi. And this idiom was far more Persianised and full of Islamic cultural references than the other styles of the language spoken elsewhere. So it was this Persianised language which became a marker of the educated, mostly Muslim but also Hindu Kaesth, identity during British India.
The impact of this movement was that it changed the identity of the common language of north India to two languages: Persianised Urdu and Sanskritised Hindi. The process of Sanskritisation started from 1802 onwards and it was a consequence of political awareness, incipient nationalism and reaction to Muslim cultural dominance. But this dominance had been contributed to; by the same movement of the Islamisation of Urdu so that a Hindu poet had to use Islamic phraseology in order to be appreciated. And yet, ironically and most unjustly, Azad’s book Ab-e-Hayat ignores both Hindu poets as well as women. There is no doubt that this process of Persianisation was a class movement meant to strike out an independent path rather than to write in Persian itself as the Iranians made fun of Indian-Persian. Moreover, from the 1830s onwards, Persian was being phased out from the domains of power. Both the Muslims and Kaesth Munshis were interested in using Persianised Urdu to retain their monopoly over jobs in UP and the Punjab. But the apprenticeship (ustadi-shagirdi) tradition, the poetry recitation sessions (Mushairas) which were assemblies of rivals and the cultural capital given to language was such that the allusions, references and the atmosphere, at least in the ghazal, was Persian and Muslim. That is why the movement alienated Hindus and that is why I call it the Islamisation of Urdu. Its greatest harm was that it began the division of Urdu-Hindi into Urdu and Hindi and this was continued by the Sankritisation of Hindi later. And yet, the spoken language of ordinary people remains undivided. It is only by recognizing this history and resolving to build upon common themes and continuities of this common language of north Indian cities that we exorcise the ghosts of the past from this subcontinent.
The first part of this article dwelt on the 18th century movement of linguistic reform (which I called ‘Islamisation of Urdu’) which Persianised Urdu and changed its Indic-orientation to Islamic culture. This part will take up another aspect of the same issue — the use of Urdu in education, printing and religious debate in British India. These factors also associated Urdu, which has an Indic base and was not associated with any specific religious community till the late 18th century, with Islam and Muslim identity in India.
Urdu-Hindi (the ancestor of both modern Urdu and Hindi) was not originally associated either with formal religious institutions or bureaucracy of the state in Mughal India. The language of the Islamic texts and liturgical practices was, of course, Arabic. However, religious texts were explained in Persian. Persian was also used for formal discourse on Islamic issues by the ulema. Yet, probably to communicate to the common people, some of the sufis used the local languages. Thus there are references to conversation, poetry recited during musical (sama’a) sessions and wise sayings in Urdu-Hindi from the 15th century onwards.
Remarkably enough, a religious reformer called Bayazid Ansari (1526-1572) wrote lines in what he called ‘Hindi’ in the Perso-Arabic script in his book entitled Khairul Bayan (1560-1570). The book was written in South Waziristan, in a Pashto-speaking area, but he thought this language useful for the propagation of his religious ideas. Anyway, despite this and other early writings, this ancestor of Urdu was not associated with Muslims. This association grew during the British period and, apart from the reasons given in Part-I of this article, it grew mainly because of the use of Urdu in printing, education and religious debate.
As Muslim political power shrank and anxiety spread about why this had happened, theulema began a movement of education and purification. This they did by writing small books (chapbooks) in the local languages. Thus there are nur namas, wafat namas, jang namas,lahad namas etc. in almost all languages used by Muslims in South Asia and, as it happens, most of them are in Urdu. This movement started in the 18th century and accelerated in the 19th and the 20th centuries. Indeed, if one consults the British reports on printing, one finds that two themes always predominate: religion and love. In some years, one may exceed the other but, as books on history and morals also have a religious colour, it may be true to say that religion mostly predominates printing.
This was a tremendous social change for all religious communities in India. Thus, although there was a secularizing trend introduced by the British also, there were more religious texts available in print than ever before. Hence, the consciousness of religious identity grew among all religious communities in India. And within Islam, the consciousness of sectarian identity grew also. Thus, on the one hand the modernist secular classes grew alienated from the religious masses. But on the other, the religious classes also grew alienated from each other and from other religious communities.
As for education, the madrassas started explaining the Arabic texts of the Dars-i-Nizami in Urdu though the classical exegeses were still in Persian. Meanwhile, Shah Abdul Qadir (1753-1827) and Shah Rafiuddin (1749-1817) translated the Holy Quran into Urdu. Exegeses of the Holy Quran, such as Murad Ullah Sanbhli’s Tafsir-e-Muradi (1771) came to be printed.
Indeed, by the 20th century, Urdu came to possess an impressive amount of Islamic literature. From the popular elegies for the martyrs of Karbala (marsiya) to devotional poetry; from stories read out among illiterate women (for example, Bibi Fatima ki Kahani) to scholarly works on Islamic philosophy; from the hagiographies of saints to the strictly monotheistic sermons of the Wahabis — all this varied literature was predominantly in Urdu.
Moreover, the sub-sects of Islam — not just the Sunnis and the Shias but the Ahle Hadith, Deobandis, Barelvis and others — wrote their polemical literature in Urdu. They indulged in debate (Munazara) in Urdu and refuted each others’ claims in the same language. Even those who are considered heretics — as Bayazid Ansari was in the 16th century — published their works, attacked their opponents and defended themselves in Urdu.
Whether one is looking at the fundamentalists, revivalists, modernists or heretics — one notices that their favorite medium of expression is Urdu. This incessant debate went on in face-to-face Munazaras and through constant pamphleteering throughout the 20th century and still continues. Even the works of the al Qaeda philosophy and the literature of the militants which is on sale outside mosques and Madrassas in Pakistan today is in Urdu though hardly any of them are mother-tongue speakers of the language. Moreover, Urdu is still the preferred language of instruction and examination in Pakistan and India. Even some Madrassas in Bangladesh give it some space though, of course, others use Bengali.
All these factors associate Urdu with Islam and the Islamic identity in the public mind in South Asia. While it is true that Urdu has also been associated with socialism (Taraqqi Pasand Adab), modernity and enlightenment (the Delhi Renaissance), the association with Islam predominates. The official discourse in Pakistan celebrates this in order to emphasize difference from India. The Indian Muslims, on the other hand, emphasize the composite character of Urdu and call it a joint product of the Hindu and Muslim civilizations. Yet, in India, too, Urdu is part of Muslim politics and efforts to preserve it necessarily dwell on the Perso-Arabic script and the Persian and Arabic diction of modern Urdu. Yet, a language may have more than one association. And it is always possible that Urdu can produce discourses of inclusiveness, tolerance and pluralism which can make it both a rich repository of Islamic literature and a language of enlightened, progressive and tolerant thought.

How Urdu got associated with Muslims in India

Languages are basically a means of communication, expression of emotion, attitude and mood. But they are also associated with identity in various degrees. Identity is nationalistic, sub-nationalistic (ethnic) and, in some rare cases, also religious. In India, it so happened that Urdu got associated with the Indian-Muslim identity between the late 18^th and the early 20^thcenturies. Despite the fact that this language is spoken by both Hindus and Muslims and Muslims themselves speak a number of languages, mainly Bengali, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Gujrati. Moreover, in the villages of UP and Bihar, both Hindus and Muslims actually speak the dialects of Hindi such as Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Maithili etc. And yet, modern is associated with Islam in India in both India and Pakistan. How did this happen? This is explained in two parts. The first part deals with the movement for the purification of Urdu between 1750 to the early 1900s.

The movement for linguistic purification — which I call the ‘Islamisation of Urdu’ for reasons given below — started in the middle of the 18^th century. The ancestor of Urdu was an Indic-oriented language. By this I mean that it had words of the local languages (bhaka or bhasha) and Sanskrit, and its allusions were to India and the local culture. Even though the script of some writings in this language is Perso-Arabic (Urdu), as opposed to Devanagari used in the Rajput writings, the language is similar. This change from the 1750s onwards which is the theme of this article.

In this purification movement, the Indic element was purged out by Muslim poets who, it appears, wanted a class-identity marker. Among the changes which occurred were: the removal of local (bhaka) and Sanskritic words, the substitution of Iranian and Islamic cultural allusions and metaphors in place of Indian and Hindu ones, and the replacement of the Indian conventions about the expression of love (woman to man) by Persian ones (man to woman or adolescent boy). Among the more than 4,000 words purged out were nain (eye),prem (love), mohan (dear one) etc. They do exist in songs and some other forms of poetry, of course, but they were banished from the ghazal. The grounds given in the writings of the poets who did all this — such as Shah Hatim (1699-1786), Imam Baksh Nasikh (d. 1838), Insha Ullah Khan Insha (1752-1818), etc — are not communal. They said that certain words are obsolete, unfashionable and rough. However, the end result was that words of Indic origin were the ones which were purged. That is one reason why I call this movement ‘Islamisation’. To take one concrete example, Hatim made a small extract of his voluminous poetic work calling it Divan Zada (1756). In the preface of this compilation, he writes in Persian that he “had stopped using the local idiom which was called ‘bhaka’” (bhaka goend mauquf karda). In its place, he tells us, he had started the refined idiom of the gentlemen of Delhi. And what was this? For an answer we have to go to Insha who defined it precisely in his Persian bookDarya-e-Latafat (1802). For Insha, this was the language of the Muslim elite of Delhi and Lucknow. Such notions about linguistic excellence were in circulation from the 14^th century at least, as Amir Khusro’s own notions illustrate. However, during the 1750s the ideas of Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzu (1687-1756), a Persian poet and linguist, had a stronger impact on Hatim and the other reformers. Arzu corrected an existing dictionary naming it Navadir-ul- Alfaz (1751). In this he indicates at several places that the standard language he had in mind was that of the elite of Delhi. And this idiom was far more Persianised and full of Islamic cultural references than the other styles of the language spoken elsewhere. So it was this Persianised language which became a marker of the educated, mostly Muslim but also Hindu Kaesth, identity during British India.

The impact of this movement was that it changed the identity of the common language of north India to two languages: Persianised Urdu and Sanskritised Hindi. The process of Sanskritisation started from 1802 onwards and it was a consequence of political awareness, incipient nationalism and reaction to Muslim cultural dominance. But this dominance had been contributed to; by the same movement of the Islamisation of Urdu so that a Hindu poet had to use Islamic phraseology in order to be appreciated. And yet, ironically and most unjustly, Azad’s book Ab-e-Hayat ignores both Hindu poets as well as women. There is no doubt that this process of Persianisation was a class movement meant to strike out an independent path rather than to write in Persian itself as the Iranians made fun of Indian-Persian. Moreover, from the 1830s onwards, Persian was being phased out from the domains of power. Both the Muslims and Kaesth Munshis were interested in using Persianised Urdu to retain their monopoly over jobs in UP and the Punjab. But the apprenticeship (ustadi-shagirdi) tradition, the poetry recitation sessions (Mushairas) which were assemblies of rivals and the cultural capital given to language was such that the allusions, references and the atmosphere, at least in the ghazal, was Persian and Muslim. That is why the movement alienated Hindus and that is why I call it the Islamisation of Urdu. Its greatest harm was that it began the division of Urdu-Hindi into Urdu and Hindi and this was continued by the Sankritisation of Hindi later. And yet, the spoken language of ordinary people remains undivided. It is only by recognizing this history and resolving to build upon common themes and continuities of this common language of north Indian cities that we exorcise the ghosts of the past from this subcontinent.

The first part of this article dwelt on the 18^th century movement of linguistic reform (which I called ‘Islamisation of Urdu’) which Persianised Urdu and changed its Indic-orientation to Islamic culture. This part will take up another aspect of the same issue — the use of Urdu in education, printing and religious debate in British India. These factors also associated Urdu, which has an Indic base and was not associated with any specific religious community till the late 18^th century, with Islam and Muslim identity in India.

Urdu-Hindi (the ancestor of both modern Urdu and Hindi) was not originally associated either with formal religious institutions or bureaucracy of the state in Mughal India. The language of the Islamic texts and liturgical practices was, of course, Arabic. However, religious texts were explained in Persian. Persian was also used for formal discourse on Islamic issues by the ulema. Yet, probably to communicate to the common people, some of the sufis used the local languages. Thus there are references to conversation, poetry recited during musical (sama’a) sessions and wise sayings in Urdu-Hindi from the 15^th century onwards.

Remarkably enough, a religious reformer called Bayazid Ansari (1526-1572) wrote lines in what he called ‘Hindi’ in the Perso-Arabic script in his book entitled Khairul Bayan (1560-1570). The book was written in South Waziristan, in a Pashto-speaking area, but he thought this language useful for the propagation of his religious ideas. Anyway, despite this and other early writings, this ancestor of Urdu was not associated with Muslims. This association grew during the British period and, apart from the reasons given in Part-I of this article, it grew mainly because of the use of Urdu in printing, education and religious debate.

As Muslim political power shrank and anxiety spread about why this had happened, theulema began a movement of education and purification. This they did by writing small books (chapbooks) in the local languages. Thus there are nur namas, wafat namas, jang namas,lahad namas etc. in almost all languages used by Muslims in South Asia and, as it happens, most of them are in Urdu. This movement started in the 18^th century and accelerated in the 19^th and the 20^th centuries. Indeed, if one consults the British reports on printing, one finds that two themes always predominate: religion and love. In some years, one may exceed the other but, as books on history and morals also have a religious colour, it may be true to say that religion mostly predominates printing.

This was a tremendous social change for all religious communities in India. Thus, although there was a secularizing trend introduced by the British also, there were more religious texts available in print than ever before. Hence, the consciousness of religious identity grew among all religious communities in India. And within Islam, the consciousness of sectarian identity grew also. Thus, on the one hand the modernist secular classes grew alienated from the religious masses. But on the other, the religious classes also grew alienated from each other and from other religious communities.

As for education, the madrassas started explaining the Arabic texts of the Dars-i-Nizami in Urdu though the classical exegeses were still in Persian. Meanwhile, Shah Abdul Qadir (1753-1827) and Shah Rafiuddin (1749-1817) translated the Holy Quran into Urdu. Exegeses of the Holy Quran, such as Murad Ullah Sanbhli’s Tafsir-e-Muradi (1771) came to be printed.

Indeed, by the 20^th century, Urdu came to possess an impressive amount of Islamic literature. From the popular elegies for the martyrs of Karbala (marsiya) to devotional poetry; from stories read out among illiterate women (for example, Bibi Fatima ki Kahani) to scholarly works on Islamic philosophy; from the hagiographies of saints to the strictly monotheistic sermons of the Wahabis — all this varied literature was predominantly in Urdu.

Moreover, the sub-sects of Islam — not just the Sunnis and the Shias but the Ahle Hadith, Deobandis, Barelvis and others — wrote their polemical literature in Urdu. They indulged in debate (Munazara) in Urdu and refuted each others’ claims in the same language. Even those who are considered heretics — as Bayazid Ansari was in the 16^th century — published their works, attacked their opponents and defended themselves in Urdu.

Whether one is looking at the fundamentalists, revivalists, modernists or heretics — one notices that their favorite medium of expression is Urdu. This incessant debate went on in face-to-face Munazaras and through constant pamphleteering throughout the 20^th century and still continues. Even the works of the al Qaeda philosophy and the literature of the militants which is on sale outside mosques and Madrassas in Pakistan today is in Urdu though hardly any of them are mother-tongue speakers of the language. Moreover, Urdu is still the preferred language of instruction and examination in Pakistan and India. Even some Madrassas in Bangladesh give it some space though, of course, others use Bengali.

All these factors associate Urdu with Islam and the Islamic identity in the public mind in South Asia. While it is true that Urdu has also been associated with socialism (Taraqqi Pasand Adab), modernity and enlightenment (the Delhi Renaissance), the association with Islam predominates. The official discourse in Pakistan celebrates this in order to emphasize difference from India. The Indian Muslims, on the other hand, emphasize the composite character of Urdu and call it a joint product of the Hindu and Muslim civilizations. Yet, in India, too, Urdu is part of Muslim politics and efforts to preserve it necessarily dwell on the Perso-Arabic script and the Persian and Arabic diction of modern Urdu. Yet, a language may have more than one association. And it is always possible that Urdu can produce discourses of inclusiveness, tolerance and pluralism which can make it both a rich repository of Islamic literature and a language of enlightened, progressive and tolerant thought.

His Excellence Advocate Atiq Siddiqi Saheb

His Excellence Advocate Atiq Siddiqi Saheb

Editor at Al-Yaum Urdu Daily

Central Delhi, Delhi- 110006 India (New Delhi Area, India) Media Production

Master of Arts (M.A.), LL..B

Respected Sir Assalamo Alekum

I know you since 1990 once when I meet you at your historical residence Gali QasimJaan which place is well-known and belong to India’s national poet Mirza Asadullah Kahn Ghalib for wanted to be Delhi University campus reporter of your historical and esteem Urdu news paper ‘Al-yaum’ and I remain your paper’s correspondent for long time but in the light of call of times I opened my life’s other chapter it will take time to narrate and also very difficult to elaborate i think this chapter will close with end of this mortal life which occurring with all living thing in this world.

After long time today I am remembering you to seen an article on your work and contribution where your very attractive photograph is also glue In the Sahara Daily news paper I am tremendously pleased and want to be your audience of your divine speech and have plane to meet you  soon for the same at your residence  I got your cell number and saved in my earpiece now I will remain keep in touch I acquire your electronic mail address also.

I sure that you all are well with your whole family and own God bless you much more, health, wealth, high level post, power, command ability, opportunity, property, stability to enrich, the whole neighborhood and human being and promotion, preservation and projection of Urdu language and literature including peace and love around the global village I bearing in mind these are the good feature is in your nature i am also trying to follow you because these are the way of deliverance for creature after cruise from this mortal humanity, and the key for the better world and healthy human societies all over the world.

I accepting your graciousness and respect to you and your all elder and submitting the daliyan of salam to they and worship to all younger’s and request kindly they compose duwa for us.

you are  one is the best writer of Urdu and English achieving Universal popularity around the world, with open hand always I blessing in the door of God that you touch your destination which you would like.

I appreciating your intelligentsia and nobility, that this is the language, which really needs now to nurture at every aspect, I believe that, you are the right person, and enriching this language with your intellectual power and proper guidance since log time.

wish you and your family all the best for the noble cause that you bring for inter-national harmony for the sake of Urdu language and literature, once again may God bless you more power to enrich the Urdu and all human being  around the world.

Your life is and also will be an inspiration and pride for coming generation till the end of this immortal world you are the guiding light of new-age world, your dedication and commitment to build a dispute free peaceful world every human being is and will be proud of on you and will never be forgotten to an honest soul and a sincere visionary, always you will remain in the heart of coming generation of this world.

Your writings and contribution are the high level solution of the day to day problems for the creation of God. Your Lot of works / writings, which are not only fountain source of patriotism and humanity also top ranking prescription which are supper level asset and better than any religions.

I pray to holy God your intellectual practices of multilingualism will be a concern for core academic and research communities. I hope to continue this relationship with your rational ideas in future and contribute to harmony based communication as much as possible.

 

Yours sincerely

Dr.  Saba

Dept. of Urdu

Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007

E-mail: urisath@yahoo.com 
Mob: No: 09968244001

Bright are Your tresses: brighten them even more:

Bright are Your tresses: brighten them even more:
Ravish the senses and the mind, ravish the heart and the eyes.

Love concealed, and beauty too!
Reveal yourself to me, or reveal me to myself.

You are the limitless ocean and I am but a tiny rivulet—
either make your peer or turn me limitless at least.

If I am a mother‐of‐pearl, the luster of my pearl is in Your hands,
But if I am a piece of brick, give me a diamond’s sheen.

If I am not destined to sing at the advent of Spring,
Make this half‐enraptured breath a skylark of the Spring.  

Why did you order me to quit the Garden of Eden?—
Now there is much to be done here—so just wait for me!

When the roll of my deeds is brought up on the Day of Reckoning,
Be ashamed as You will shame me.

The Reshmi Rumal Movement was an Indian armed movement that planned to declare war against the British Empire in the early 20th century.

During British rule in second decade of the 20th century, Maulana Mehmood ul Hasan and his team planned to bring a revolution against the British Empire. Their plan was to motivate Indian youth and train them. A large number of youth and his students joined this movement. The key leaders of that movement were Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni, Maulana Shah Raheem Raipuri, Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi, Maulana Muhammad Sadik from khadda and Maulana Muhammad Mian Mansoor Ansari.

It was an armed movement so they needed arms and ammunition. Therefore, they needed support from countries outside India especially anti-British countries, such as Turkey, Afghanistan, and Russia. Shaikhul Hind sent Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi to Afghanistan for special task and Maulana Ansari to the tribes of the Frontier area to get their support for a war against the British Raj, he with Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni set off to Hijaz (current Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) in 1915 to get Turkish support. He met with Ghalib Pasha and obtained his signature on a declaration of war. He then planned to visit the Frontier area via Baghdad andBaluchistan, but his plan was exposed and he was arrested with Maulana Madni at Makkah and detained at Malta where he remained for over three years till his release in 1920.

This movement is known as Tehreek-e Reshmi Rumal (Silken Kerchief movement) because the letters exchanged between Shaikhul Hind and his colleagues containing the outlines of the plan to recruit the volunteers for the army and to establish a national government(soraj) were written on silk piece of cloth.

The shame which weighs us down

The shame which weighs us down

Ground realities by SYED BADRUL AHSAN

E-mail:ahsan.syedbadrul@gmail.com

The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star,. Wednesday, march 13, 2013

 

As a citizen of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, I am embarrassed that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reminded us of our responsibilities to the religious minorities in our land. I am embarrassed not because they have come in with an expression of their concerns, but because we in this country have today created the perfect conditions for our Hindus and our Christians and our Buddhists to feel unsafe once more in a land that has been home to them for centuries and for generations.
It is shame which assails me and my fellow Bengalis, for we have all along conveyed what now appears to be an untruth that ours is a land of religious harmony. I am ashamed because the harmony we speak of has actually been a reflection of the silence brought on by fear of the religious majority in Bangladesh. The silence of the minority is often, in our part of the world, a metaphor for fear. We have tried to pass off that silence as an instance of peaceful, happy coexistence between and among followers of the various faiths underpinning the geography of this country.
As a Bengali proud of his heritage, proud of being part of history that had us triumph at the end of a twilight struggle for freedom in 1971, I am ashamed that Hindu homes have been ransacked in this secular land, Hindu temples have been torched and Hindu idols have been insulted by men who have nurtured the seeds of evil planted in their souls long ago by their masters in pre-1971 Pakistan. It is my shame to turn around and observe some of my co-religionists tell me and people like me that my religion is in danger from its own followers, from the likes of me.
My embarrassment is in knowing that there are yet peddlers of fanaticism who keep denigrating my Islamic faith through humiliating, in systemic and systematic manner, those of my fellow citizens who believe in different gods and pray in different ways. That is my shame, as deep as the shame which assails those good Pakistanis who must suffer the agony of seeing the homes of their hapless Christians go up in smoke because a wicked Pakistani, a Muslim to boot, has found reason to accuse these followers of Jesus of blasphemy against Islam.
It is my shame, as a Bengali holding fast to the principles of secular politics, that neither I nor my fellow citizens have been able to save others of our fellow citizens when they have come under attack from mobs who, in the name of preserving Islam, have committed apostasy, have become heretics, through setting the images of Lord Buddha on fire, through putting to the torch centuries-old religious scriptures treasured by his followers, in Cox’s Bazar. And we still speak of religious harmony?
In the enormity of my shame, I cannot look my Hindu friends in the eye because when my Muslim co-religionists destroyed their temples and homes in Banshkhali, Joypurhat, Noakhali, Laksam and other places in a country we do not call Pakistan any more, I was unable to lift a hand or even a finger to save them from those pseudo-Muslims who have for decades brought Islam into disrepute.
My shame acquires deeper shades of worry when a section of politicians in the land, despite having wielded political power and in the interest of pushing a perfectly legitimate government from office, feel absolutely no shame in serving up the falsehood of Muslim sentiments being under threat in a country for whose liberty all Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians waged war more than four decades ago. These politicians do not hear the heart-breaking cries of Hindus whose homes have turned into cinders, whose gods have been flung from their pedestals by elements whose earlier generation killed and raped in the name of a communal state we eventually put down. These politicians, free of shame and free of conscience, do not ask my Buddhist compatriot why he does not feel at home any more in Bangladesh. They look the other way when my Christian fellow citizen cowers in fear as a fanatical mob approaches his home, to destroy it, to have him abandon it.
My shame is shame that touches the generational. My father was ashamed when his scholarly Hindu teachers in school made their way across the post-partition frontier because the land of their birth was not ready to protect them from the fanatical activists of Pakistan. My father’s generation wallowed in deep shame when Gandhi made his way to Noakhali and none among the heroic defenders of the two-nation theory did.
It was Gandhi who calmed passions in Calcutta in 1946. He did the same in Noakhali a few months later. Where were my leaders, those who told my father’s generation that Pakistan was to be a land of the pure, that the beauty of Islam would guide us into the future, in all this fire and fury engulfing the country?
They destroyed a country. They blasphemed against Islam.
It is my shame that I must watch self-styled Marxists and so-called political commentators on television go out on a limb to paint bad men in the garish colours of false respectability and say nothing about those who have borne the pain of being part of the religious minority. My shame is in knowing that men like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman do not live any more. It is in realising, almost with a start, that what he and his generation of Bengalis did to douse the flames of communal frenzy in 1964 is not about to be repeated by an equally powerful leader in 2013. The flames leap up to the skies again. The man who will tame them is nowhere to be seen.
It will be our everlasting shame if we do not keep this country away from the grasping hands of those who would destroy it brick by brick. It will be embarrassment of the deepest black if those who remember the War of Liberation do not seize the moment and take Bangladesh back to where it was on the afternoon of December 16, 1971. And that was an afternoon of celebrations of the Bengali spirit of nationalism, a moment when Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians came together to proclaim, once more, that history was theirs to shape and the land was theirs to inhabit — for all time.

Indian academic circles

Language is a carnival of thoughts threaded through and across the threshold of life where polite is synonymous with power and rudeness a tag to atrophy the ordinary. You are allowed to step into the world of elite only and if you qualify their coda. Surprisingly, only certain stylized – even stymied – approaches to interpretative studies are accredited worthy of the academic brand. This is the only reason why the street and the hovel are reduced to curios, and the academia sneers at the mundane and everyday lingo. Across universities in India and abroad, correctness in language usage is anathematic towards the spontaneous outbursts of people who are not formally educated. It is an extremely sad state of affairs. It seriously needs to be examined why we do not let people who cannot read or write but are perfectly wholesome thinkers in a spoken/ oral culture into the hallowed precincts of the university.

Universities are a shrinking space where qualifications have become far more pertinent than the ability to think, examine and analyze. Around me on the roads and streets of Indian cities I come across extremely brilliant thinkers with zero formal education who nevertheless ply rickshaws or work as unskilled lab our. It is hardly out of the ordinary to find children who zing through complex puzzles and have natty imagination which does not let them into the portals of either the university or the jobs accessible to those who excel academically. Academics are not and ought not to be the sole criterion to an individual’s acumen. Surprisingly, educationists in India have refused to look into the matter where literacy has become an exercise to further repetitive and rote learning and to add to the arch tonics of what ‘is’. Where is our sense of morality and the need to include the peripheral in the mainstream? Why is it that those who cannot read or write are not allowed the privilege to speak and engage the world of thought at large? Is it that as nation with a spiritual backyard we cannot take cognizance of the formally illiterate till they are marginalized or cornered into being a special case/ category that we can be savant saviours to?

Comprehensive Biography of Amir Khusro (1253-1325)

A reference may be made to Amir Khusro who died in the same year in which Ghazi Malik died. He was the greatest of all the poets of India who have written in Persian. He was born in 1253 at Patial and died at the age of 72. His father was a native of Kash in Turkistan but he was driven from his native land by the Mongols and found shelter in India.

The original name of the poet was Yamin-ud-Din Muhammad Hasan although he is commonly known as Amir Khusro. The Young poet entered the service of Ala-ud-Din Khalji but when he became a disciple of Shaikh Nizam-ud-Din Auliya, he gave up worldly ambitions and retired from worldly life.

However, he continued to write poetry. It is estimated that he wrote more than 4 lakhs of couplets. His couplets have been divided into four classes. To the first class belong his youthful effusions. to the second class belong poems of early middle age and those were written when Amir Khusro was giving up childish things and turning his thoughts towards religion.

To the third class belong those poems which were written when Amir Khusro had attained the dignity of a religious teacher. To the fourth class belong the poems of his old age. Each of the four classes bears the impression of his views on this world and the next, in the second class are to be found poems which were intended to please the Emperor.

The Historical Masnavis composed by Amir Khusro are of the greatest importance for purpose of history. Qiran-us-Sa'dain or "The Conjunctions of the Two Auspicious Stars" was written at the request of Kaiqubad. It has for its main theme the quarrel and reconciliation between Kaiqubad and Bughra Khan.

As Amir Khusro enjoyed the patronage of both the father and son and was himself and observer of the incident described by him, there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of his statements. Miftah-ul-Futuh, a portion of the Ghurrat-ul-Kamal or The Key to Success deals with the earlier successes of Jalal-ud-Din Firuz Khalji. The central theme of Ashiqa is the romantic love of Khizr Khan, the eldest son of Ala-ud-Din Khalji and Deval Devi.

It begins with the conquest of India by the Muslims and proceeds to give a detailed account of the victories of Ala-ud-Din in peace and war his successful campaigns against the Mongols, his expeditions to the Deccan, his triumph in Gujarat and his regulations which introduced peace and prosperity in the country.

Apart from its literary value, the Ashiqa is perhaps the most important of Amir Khusro's works from the historical point of view. Here we have a contemporary account of the reign of Ala-ud-Din Khalji, written by a shrewed observer who personally knew all the principal actors in the drama.

Nuth Sipihr or "the Nine Skies" was written by Amir Khusro at the request of Mubarak Khalji to celebrate the glory of his reign. Incidentally the poet throws much light on the social and religious conditions prevalent in his age. Amir Khusro says that India is far superior to Khorasan.

The Indians are very proficient in all branches of philosophy and learning is widespread among them. While foreign scholars very often come to India for study, the people of India are so advanced that they never feel the need of going to other countries for the purpose of adding to their knowledge.

In Ghurrat-ul-Kamal, Amir Khusro gives us a very interesting discussion on the types and merits of poetry in general and incidentally dwells upon the beauty of the language and poetry of India.

Tarikh-i-Alai or Khazain-ul-Futuh is a short but very valuable History of the reign of Ala- ud-Din Khalji. The general accuracy of Amir Khusro is beyond doubt, but no modern historian can accept in full his estimate of the character and achievements of Ala-ud-Din. Amir Khusro gives us many interesting details and if we can follow the very difficult language in which the work is written, it will prove to be a veritable mine of information.

In his five Diwans, viz., Tuhfat-us-Sighar, Wast-ul-Tayat, Ghurrat-ul-Kamal, Bakiya-i-Nakiya and Nihayat-ul-Kamal, Amir Khusro often refers to incidents in his own carrer and many of the poems are in praise of his numerous patrons.

Amir Khusro had great respect for poet Sadi of Persia. When the latter visited India, he was very much entertained by Amir Khusro and the result was that Sadi praised Amir Khusro before Ala-ud-Din Khalji. In one of his verses, Amir Khusro admits the influence of Sadi in these words: "The volume of my verse hath the binding of Shiraz."

According to Dr. A. C. Banerjee, "There are very few literary men in medieval Indian history who can lay claim to the wide personal knowledge of men and events during a period extending ever half a century which it was the privilege of Amir Khusro to possess.

Though he wisely confined his activities to the sphere in which his genius shone with unrivalled brilliance and never aspired after any direct participation in political affairs, yet his unique experience must have made him an acute observer of events.

This consideration enhances the value of his testimony with regard to the history of his times, because in dealing with an age from which little contemporary evidence has survived, the best material we can hope to seize is the version of an intelligent observer, who had access to all court intrigues and himself lived in intimate contact with some of the principal personages who controlled the destinies of the country."'

Yours sincerely

Dr. Syed Mohd. Yahya. Saba

Dept. of Urdu

Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007

E-mail: urisath@yahoo.com 
http://people.du.ac.in/~mysaba/
http://penforpeace.blogspot.in/

Mob: No: 09968244001

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/

http://kmcollege.academia.edu/MDYAHYASABA

 

Biography of Amir Khusro

Ab'ul Hasan Yamin al-Din Khusrow (Persian: / Urdu ابوالحسن یمین‌الدین خسرو‎; Hindi: अबुल हसन यमीनुद्दीन ख़ुसरौ), better known as Amir Khusrow (or Khusrau) Dehlawi was an Indian musician, scholar and poet. He was an iconic figure in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent. A Sufi mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, Amir Khusrow was not only a notable poet but also a prolific and seminal musician. He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. 

He is regarded as the "father of qawwali" (the devotional music of the Indian Sufis). He is also credited with enriching Hindustani classical music by introducing Persian and Arabic elements in it, and was the originator of the khayal and tarana styles of music.The invention of the tabla is also traditionally attributed to Amir Khusrow. Amir Khusrow used only 11 metrical schemes with 35 distinct divisions. He has written Ghazal, Masnavi, Qata, Rubai, Do-Beti and Tarkibhand. 

A musician and a scholar, Amir Khusrow was as prolific in tender lyrics as in highly involved prose and could easily emulate all styles of Persian poetry which had developed in medieval Persia, from Khaqani's forceful qasidas to Nezami's khamsa. His contribution to the development of the ghazal, hitherto little used in India, is particularly significant. 

Early Life and Background 

Yaminuddin Abul Hasan Ameer Khusro was born in Patiali near Etah in northern India. His father, Amir Sayf ud-Din Mahmud, as a Turkic Officer and a member of the Lajin (Lachin) tribe of Transoxania, themselves belonging to the Kara-Khitais. His mother hailed from Delhi. Born of a Turkish Lajin (Lachin) later Saifuddin Shamsi, Amir Khusro eclipsed all his predecessors. His interests were kaleidoscopic and his genius versatile. But he enjoyed fame in the field of Persian poetry, in which his position is next to Saadi and can favorably be compared with Hafiz in lyrics.

The road to the well is much too difficult, 
How to get my pot filled? 
When I went to fill the water, 
In the furore, I broke my pot. 
Khusro has given his whole life to you, O Nizam. 
Would you please take care of my veil (of self respect), 
The road to the well is much too difficult.

Later Life 

Amir Khusro served seven kings and three princes from the times of Sultan Balban to Mohammad Bin Tughlaq. His passion for his birthplace Delhi was ripped to the extent that when he was posted in Patiali, he not only lamented but completed a masanwi under the title ‘Shikayatnamah-e-Patiali’. Condemning Patiali and recalling the beauty and pleasure of his hometown Delhi, he compares himself with Joseph, who in separation from his home town Kan’an, feeling himself distressed, always pined for it. 

"As Joseph, after having been taken away as a captive from his home town, Kan’an, used to sing the praise of his home town, so is the case with me. Though I happen to be faraway from my home town, yet I always sing of its beauty. My place was Quwat-ul-Islam (a title of Delhi) a qibla of the kings of seven climes (i.e. of the entire world). That place is Delhi, which is a twin sister of the holy paradise and true copy of Arsh (throne of God or a highest heaven) on the page of the earth." 

Literary Life 

Poetry was inherent in Ameer Khusro. The day he was born, his father took him to a God absorbed darwesh, who said to his father, "You have brought one who would go two steps ahead of khaqani (nightingale)." 

In his early childhood, Khusro had developed a putting together in verse form worse of discordant meaning. Up to the age of sixteen, whichever book of verse he happened to lay his hand on, he tried to follow its author in the art of composition. 

His adolescence ushered him under the guidance of both Mufti Muizzudin Gharifi and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, his mentor. Both of them guided him to the path of following the style of Saddi and Kamal Isfahani. Even at that young age, he used to lambaste his contemporaries, including Hasan Dehlavi in qitah (quatrains). 

"And occasionally I used to lambaste my contemporary poets, with the sword of my tongue in a qitah form." Ameer Khusro was quite indifferent in politics, he never indulged himself in the intrigues of courtiers. He is considered as the pioneer figure of the Indo-Muslim music. In fact, it was he who started the process of synthesizing Turko-Persian music with Indian music. He has credited three books on music just as three diwans of poetry. 

"My verses have so far been collected in three diwans, would you believe, that if there were a system of notation for registering musical compositions, my performance in the field of music too, would have been collected in three registers" He invented number of ragas and raginis which include such novelties as Qaul, Qulbanah, Taranah. He also composed verses in Persian and Hindwi. 

Royal Poet 

On the one hand Sultan Aalauddin, for the sake of righteousness and expediency of empire, stamped out all kinds of intoxicants, the prohibited things, the wherewithals of disobedience, debauchery and wickedness with the use of chastisement and and on the other side Ameer Khusro opened wide the gate of discipleship and accepted all kinds of men as his murids, be they high or low, wealthy or impecunious, noble or faqir, learned or ignorant, high born or low born, urbane or rustic, soldier or warrior. 

They all abstained from improper acts and if anyone would commit a sin, he would come and confess his guilt before Khusro and would indeed renew his discipleship. Men and women, young and old, merchants and ordinary men, slaves and servants and even young children began offering prayers regularly including the late morning prayers. Even the royal ameers, the armed acquirers, secretaries, clerks, sepoys and royal slaves, were particular about offering these supererogatory prayers. Owing to Khusro’s barakah (blessings), most people of the area including the high and low and irrespective of cast and creed became involved in prayers, tasawwuf (mysticism) and tark (renunciation) and turned to piety. During the last few years of Sultan Alauddin’s reign no person would talk of liquor, of beloveds, of debauchery and gambling, of obscenities and indecent life and no one would commit usury or usurp others’ rights. 

Out of the teachings of Khusro, the shop people gave up lying and cheating and underweighing. Scholars visiting Khusro would talk of books on tasawwuf such as Fawaid-ul-Fuwad, Qut-ul-Qulub, Ihya-ul-Uloom, Kashif-ul-Mahjub, Awarif and Malfuzat of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia. People visited the bookshops in search of the books on suluk (deportment and self-control). Owing to the increased demand among the Sufis for lota (water vessel used specially for ritual cleansing) and tasht (basin for washing hands), the prices of these articles had slightly gone up showing that most people bent towards spiritual Sufi lifestyle. 

Ameer Khusro served as an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity in his time. His Hindu or Hindwi poetry for which he has been so popular among the school-going children as well as elderly generation. In his introduction to Ghurra-ul-Kamal, Khusro writes, "A few poems that I have composed in Hindwi, I have made a gift of them to my friends. I am a Hindustani Turk. I compose verses in Hindwi with the fluency of running water." 

Parrot of India 

It was he, who himself called Tuti-e-Hind’ (parrot of India). ‘To speak the truth, I am an Indian Parrot. If you want to listen from me some subtle verses, ask me then to recite some of my Hindwi poems." He himself did not collect and preserve his Hindwi poems but made a gift of them to his friends. His poem, Kaliq Bari is a lexicon composed of synonymous words, from four languages, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hindwi. 

Religious Life 

Ameer Khusro was a devout Muslim. He was a friend and disciple of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia. He was a profound expounder of ethics and strict observant of Sharia. Sharia acquires meaning when it maintains a close relation with reality partaking the essence of reality-love of God. If Sharia is lacking in that or in other words if it is without ain (the alphabet meaning the essence of God-love) it becomes shar (evil). Like Shah Waliullah of the subsequent year, his attitude towards the Sufis of hypocrisy was very critical. 

"Ah! what a shameful scene this band of the ‘pretenders to abstinence. They wear short sleeves (pose as fakirs) but keep their hands stretched in begging. They pretend abstinence but they are always in pursuit of money. They have commercialized faqiri (begging). How can one love God at the same time? As God’s unity is without any shadow of duality, he does not like dualism in the path of His love. 

Ameer Khusro’s spiritualism, in fact, consisted in his philosophy of love, which he shared with all the Sufis. The depth of humanism in his poetry springs from that source of ‘Divine love’. He has composed as many as 99 works and four lac lyrics, which cover almost every aspect of life. He was a living legend. He was more of a qalandar (a free soul), though not less of a Sufi, Khusro’s humanism transcended all barriers of cast, colour and creed. In an autocratic age, when the king’s wilful actions were unrestricted, Khusro had the courage and the intrepidity to speak before the king, of the value of the equality of the man. 

"Though my value may be, a little less, than that of yours yet, if your veins were to be cut open, our blood will come out of the same colour." 

Death 

Khusro not only upheld the values of equality and dignity of labour but also the principles of social justice. His love and respect for Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia reached the apogee that when he heard about his death at Lakhnawati, he immediately arrived and went to his grave, where he blackened his face and rolled over in dust in utter grief, tearing his garments. Six months after that event, he died on Friday 29th Ziq’ad 725AH/1325. His death is not a death in the literal sense of the world for, he would always remain one of the very few unforgettable legends of literature.

Amir Khusro's Works:

Tuhfa-tus-Sighr (Offering of a Minor) his first divan, contains poems composed between the age of 16 and 19 
Wastul-Hayat (The Middle of Life) his second divan, contains poems composed at the peak of his poetic career 
Ghurratul-Kamaal (The Prime of Perfection) poems composed between the age of 34 and 43 
Baqia-Naqia (The Rest/The Miscellany) compiled at the age of 64 
Qissa Chahar Darvesh The Tale of the Four Dervishes 
Nihayatul-Kamaal (The Height of Wonders) compiled probably a few weeks before his death. 
Qiran-us-Sa’dain (Meeting of the Two Auspicious Stars) Mathnavi about the historic meeting of Bughra Khan and his son Kyqbad after long enmity (1289) 
Miftah-ul-Futooh (Key to the Victories) in praise of the victories of Jalaluddin Firuz Khilji (1291) 
Ishqia/Mathnavi Duval Rani-Khizr Khan (Romance of Duval Rani and Khizr Khan) a tragic love poem about Gujarat’s princess Duval and Alauddin’s son Khizr (1316) 
Noh Sepehr Mathnavi. (Mathnavi of the Nine Skies) Khusrau’s perceptions of India and its culture (1318) 
Tarikh-i-Alai ('Times of Alai'- Alauddin Khilji) 
Tughluq Nama (Book of the Tughluqs) in prose (1320) 
Khamsa-e-Nizami (Khamsa-e-Khusrau) five classical romances: Hasht-Bahisht, Matlaul-Anwar, Sheerin-Khusrau, Majnun-Laila and Aaina-Sikandari 
Ejaaz-e-Khusrovi (The Miracles of Khusrau) an assortment of prose compiled by himself 
Khazain-ul-Futooh (The Treasures of Victories) one of his more controversial books, in prose (1311–12) 
Afzal-ul-Fawaid utterances of Nizamuddin Auliya 
?haliq Bari a versified glossary of Persian, Arabic, and Hindawi words and phrases attributed to Amir Khusrau, but most probably written in 1622 in Gwalior by ?iya ud-Din ?husrau 
Jawahar-e- Khusrovi often dubbed as the Hindawi divan of Khusrau

Yours sincerely

Dr. Syed Mohd. Yahya. Saba

Dept. of Urdu

Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007

E-mail: urisath@yahoo.com 
http://people.du.ac.in/~mysaba/
http://penforpeace.blogspot.in/

Mob: No: 09968244001

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/

http://kmcollege.academia.edu/MDYAHYASABA

HAZRAT KHWAJA ABUL HASSAN 
AMIR KHUSRO: (R.A) 
(1253 A.D. to 1325 A.D.) (The Parrot of Hind)

"Love to Allah (God) is the destination of success.
Romance is the road of this righteous Path.
The Captain of the ship is no other, but His Grace.
Oh, traveller tie up your belongings,
Board in it and sail in the Ocean."

"Men do not mirror themselves in running water –
they mirror themselves in still water. Only what
is still can still the stillness of other things."

"Love is not like a cup of wine, given to the indiscreet.
Tears are not like rubies gifted to worthless one."

"Love is greater than religion.
Love is the essence of all creeds!
Love beautifies the soul and beauty of
the soul resides in the love of humanity.

"Man, in truth, is himself a sacrifice.

1) Life History

Hazrat Amir Khusro was a great Sufi, a wealthy merchant who once exchanged all his wealth for a pair of His Holiness Sultan-ul-Mashaikh shoes, an intellectual gaint of many languages, an artist, a prolific author, a genius musician who invented the ‘sitar’, a versatile composer and a true devoted "mureed" of His Holiness. He was "All-in-One" type of highly amazing mixture of Divine gifts.

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) was the son of Amir Alachin a Turk from Laccheen. His actual name was Saifuddin Mahmood Shamsi. At the invasion of Gengiz Khan he migrated from his native place Kesh near Samarkand to Balkh. Saifuddin was the chieftan of Hazara. Shamsuddin Iltamish the King of Delhi welcomed them to his capital. He provided shelter to the dislodged princes artisans, scholars and rich nobles. Saifuddin was among them. It was around 626/ 360 A.H/1226 A.D. In 1230 A.D he was granted afief in the district of Patiali (in Etah District-Uttar Pradesh). He married to BiBi Daulat Naz, who bore him three sons and one daughter. Yaminuddin (Khusro) was one among them born at Patiali, presently known as Hazrat Amir Khusro Nagar in District Etah (U.P.) in the year 652-653 A.H/1252-53 A.D. Yaminuddin’s (Khusro) father Saifuddin was mostly engaged in battles, and was killed in 660 A.H/1260 A.D. Yaminuddin or Khusro was an intelligent child. Poetry came to him at the early age of eight.

Later, Khusro reflects on his father’s bravery as:

"My father Saifuddin Mahmood Shamsi, the renowned breaker of enemies ranks, possessed might, enough to conquer the world with all the merits of his inner self, he never spoke about his inherent goodness and behaved like an Angel. He was a military commander and a saint. Although he was highly educated and cultured. He loved martyrdom from the beginning and he drank ultimately the Sharbate-Shahadat."

After the death of his father, he came to Delhi to his grand father’s (maternal) Imadul Mulk (Rawat Arz) house. He grew under his grand father’s guardianship. When Amir Khusro was twenty years, his grand father who was 113 years old in 670-71 A.H when he left the world. He was disturbed and was looking for an established career. He joined as a soldier in the Army of Malik Chajju - a nephew of Balban. But his poetry brought him in the Assembly of the Royal Court where he was highly honoured. The devoted mother brought him up and little is known about his modest mother Hazrat BiBi Daulat Naz. He grew up as a soldier and a poet.

When he was forty seven years old (698 A.H/1298 A.D.) his mother and brother died. He cried like a child and said:

"A double radiance left my star this year
Gone are my brother and my mother,
My two full moons have set and ceased to Shine
In one short week through this ill-luck of mine."

Khusro’s homage to his mother on death was:

"Where ever the dust of your (mother) feet is found it is like a relic of Paradise for me."

Once, Bughra Khan son of Balban was invited to listen Amir Khusro. He was so enchanted that he bestowed countless gold coins. The prize impaired the relations with his master Chajju Khan. Khusro left him and went to Bughra Khan, where he served for four years and came to fame. In 677 A.H/1277 A.D. Bughra Khan marched towards Bengal to crush the coup and Amir Khusro accompanied him. Bughra Khan was then appointed ruler of Bengal but however Amir Khusro came back to Delhi.

The eldest son Khan Mohd of Balban (who was in Multan) came to Delhi. When he heard about Amir Khusro he invited him to his court. Finally Amir Khusro accompanied him to Multan in 679 A.H/1279 A.D. Multan at that period was the gateway to Hind and a centre place of knowledge and learning. The caravans of scholars, tradesmen and emissaries transited from Baghdad, Arab, Iran to Delhi via Multan. Amir Khusro says that:

"I tied the belt of service on my waist and put on the cap of companionship for another five years. I imparted lustre to the water of Multan from the ocean of my wits and pleasantries."

Amir Khusro and Amir Hassan Sijzi were happy under his patronage.

Amir Hasan Sijzi was younger to Amir Khusro by two years. Both were in the company of the celebrated historian Hazrat Moulana Ziauddin Barni the writer of "Tareekh-e-Ferozshahi" who completed it after thirty one years of Amir Khusro’s death. His Shrine lies south to Hazrat Amir Khusro’s (R.A) Shrine.

In the year 683A.H./1283A.D Jinar Khan a Mongol, invaded India. Khan Mohd along with many soldiers were killed in a fierceful battles and Amir Khusro came back to Delhi and describes as follows:

"In the furnace of torture, I too fell a prey to the heathens; one of the tied me by a rope to the saddle of his horse and made me run in front of his horse. What a torture it was."

But Allah Tala (God) saved him and managed to release from captivity. He immediately left the city of torture (Multan) and rushed to Delhi to see his anxious mother. As soon as she saw her son-motherly instinct aroused with love. He enjoyed the motherly great care and love.

The deep grief of brave Prince Khan Mohd remained in his heart forever. He wrote the two elegy (sorrowful poems) of Prince Khan Mohd describing him the most generous, brave and good human being. At the old age of eighty, King Balban called his second son Bughra Khan from Bengal, but he refused to come back to Delhi. After King Balban’s death his grandson Kikabad was made the King of Delhi who was 17 years of age. Khusro remained in his service for two years (686 A.H to 687 A.H/1286 to 1287 A.D.).

After the death of Kikabad, a turk soldier Jalaluddin Khilji took power and became the King. He was a poet and loved poets. Khusro was highly honoured and respected in his Darbar and was known as "AMIR KHUSRO". He was made secretary to the King "Mushaf-Dar". His status was raised to ‘Amarat’; and was given the insigma of a Silver belt and 1200 Tankas annually in lien of his services. The darbar life made Amir Khusro focus more on literary works. Barni writes, Khusro’s Ghazals which he composed in quick succession at that time was set to music and were sung by singing girls every night before King Jalaluddin Khilji. Amir Khusro was rewarded beyond expectations and was acknowledged in a following verse.

"The King of the world Jalale-Din, in reward for my infinite pain which I undertook in composing verses, bestowed upon me an unimaginable treasure of wealth."

King Khilji was a brave soldier and an able administrator. He expanded his Empire and won four battles in a year. He ruled for 6 years from 689A.H/1289A.D to 695A.H/1295A.D. He was murdered by the men of Allauddin Khilji, his nephew and son-in-law. Allauddin Khilji then ascended the throne of Delhi on 22^nd Zilhaj 695A.H/1295A.D.

Amir Khusro wrote a short auto-biographical Masnavi called "Shah Name mun"—of Allauddin’s life. Amir Khusro was the few notables who blessed Allauddin Khilji.

Allauddin Khilji was one of the great ruler of India in early Muslim empire. He was a strong man, hard in nature, brave and intelligent soldier. He expanded his Empire to Deccan in South and far to East and west of India. He ruled for twenty one years. Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) enjoyed his patronage and developed much of his works. Amir Khusro in his book "Khazinatul-Futuh" (the treasures of victory) penned down Allauddin’s construction works, wars, peace and security, administrative services. Further in another poetical work Masnavi "Matta-ul-Anwaar" (Fountain of light) consisted of 3310 verses (completed in 15 days) had the theme of "Love of God". The second masnavi, "Shireen" consisted of 4000 verses. The third Masnavi "Laila Majnu" story of Laila and Majnu and their romance. The fourth voluminous Masnavi was "Aina-e-Sikandari" had 4500 verses relating to the heroic deeds of Alexander the Great. The fifth Masnavi was "Hasht Bahisht" related to the events of King Bahram Gaur.

All these works made Amir Khusro a leading luminary in the poetical world. The King Allauddin Khilji was highly pleased by his works and rewarded him handsomely.

After Allauddin Khilji death his son Qutubuddin Mukarak Shah became the King. Amir Khusro wrote a Masnavi on Mubarak Shah as "Nahsi Pahar" (Nine Skies), a historical poetry relating the events of Mubarak Shah. He classified his poetry in nine chapters, each part is considered as a sky. In the third chapter he wrote about India and its environment, the atmosphere and seasons, flowers their varieties beauty and the fragrances, the chirping of birds and their colourful gaiety the animals world, education and sciences, ideology and religions of India, languages spoken and their zones etc. This shows how patriotic Khusro was to his motherland and had deep knowledge of it. He wrote another voluminious book in the period of Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah by name "Ejaze Khusravi", the book consisted of five volumes. Thus it reflected Amir Khusro’s ocean of knowledge and scholarship.

After Mubarak Shah, Ghyasuddin Tughlaq came to the throne. Amir Khusro wrote a historic Masnavi "Tughlaq Name" on him. Thus all Kings of their period, honoured Amir Khusro as the jewel of their crown. They felt proud of his writing. Thus Amir Khusro served seven Sultans, saw seven Sultanates in his life time. He was also an astronomer and an astrologer. When Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah son was born, he prepared the horoscope of child where certain predictions, were made. This horoscope is included in the Masnavi "Saqiana"

(2) A Great Secular Scholar and Patriotic Poet

There is no country in the World whose cultural heritage is so much blended with Divine touch. In Punjabi, Baba Farid and Nanak spoke in poem – thus the beginning of Punjabi literacy heritage. In Gujarat, Narsi Mehta and Meera Bai sang songs of the glory of Ranchchodji – thus the beginning of Gujarati Literature. In Kashmir, Lalleshwari and Nand Rishi (Sheikh Nurudedin) sang to the glory of God – thus the beginning of Kashmiri language Urdu, (the rich langaue of India) was also born in the same fashon. His Holiness showed keen interest in the promotion of mutual love and goodwill among all classes of people. When His Holiness found that languages and dialectic obstacles clogged this harmony and hindered the understanding amongst the Afghans, the Iranians and the Turks and others, His Holiness ordered Hazrat Amir Khusro to invent a "new language" so as to facilitate inter-communication and homogenous oneness amongst the people of India. Hazrat Amir Khusro mixed the Persian with local Brij Bhasha (native language of the North) and this mixture laid the foundation of Urdu. With the passage of time and by its usage it developed into more refined Urdu cultural.

Delhi is proud of His Holiness and Hazrat Khusro. Delhi is proud of Urdu. It was in Delhi that Urdu was born, nourished and flourished. Hazrat Khusro is the father of Modern Urdu Literature. He composed the first poem in Hindi too. He is the pioneer of Hindustani Literature. He was a great scholar in Persian. He introduced Sitar, the five string instrument. He was a pioneer of Indian Classical music.

Hazrat Amir Khusro was not only a talented and highly learned poet of India having full command over Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Hindi and Sanskrit languages but he was a distinguished Sufi by virtue of his initiation and closeness to His Holiness. His poetical composition, specially the Persian-Hindi blending were aimed at cementing the bonds of culture and friendship between the Hindus and Muslims.

Amir Khusro was a leading poet in Persian and Hindi languages. In his introduction to ‘Ghurratul Kamal’ Khusro wrote that, "a few poems that I have composed in Hindi I have made a gift to my friends." He was a Hindustani Turk. In another famous verse he said, "To speak the truth, I am an Indian parrot. If you want to listen from me some subtle verses, ask me then to recite some of my Hindi poems".

Amir Khusro says that the Hindus are Mushrik, (i.e. pluralist in their belief of God) as under:

"Though Hindus are not men of our faith, yet on certain points they hold concurrent ideas in respect of our faith. They affirm that life is one and eternal and that God created everything."

He was the monarch in the field of prose and poetry. His Holiness, Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A) says, "He is our Khusro not Nasiri Khusro, May God help my Khusro". Amir Khusro remained wedded to truth, love and humanity.

(3) Path of Sufism

Amir Khusro was very promising child. He became a scholar of philosophy and science in short time. At the age of twenty, he became a famous poet. He was a man of soaring imagination. The greatness lies in his breaking the mistrust and isolation in the then existing various culture groups and thus paving the way for reconciliation at the social and ideological levels. Such conciliation and concord amongst them was a moral and intellectual demand besides being an urgent social necessity. Khusro rose to a high status because of his connections in political circles and had opportunities of observing many important events from close quarters. He was a man of learning and helped the growth of Hindustani literary societies. His genius unfolded itself in poetry, music and prose.

After his father’s death, he migrated along with his mother to Delhi where he was brought up by his maternal grandfather Imadul Mulk Rawat Arz. Mir Khurd writes that His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A) came to Delhi at the age of sixteen for the purpose of his higher education in the profession of Qazi. By a strange turn of fortune he stayed in the same locality where Amir Khusro lived i.e. in Namak Sarai. After some time His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A) shifted to Rawat Arz house on the recommendation of Hazrat Amir Khusro. He further writes that when Amir Khusro reached his adolescence he became "Iradat Kash" of His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A). Amir Khusro writes in the preface to his "Diwan" "Wastful Hayat" that he was sixteen years old when he found His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamudddin Aulia (R.A) as his spiritual mentor, along with Mufti Moizuddin Gharifi. Both of them guided him to the path of following the style of Shaikh Sadi and Ispahani.

He and His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A) shared the same passion for music. Amir Khusro was a noble man, Sufi Saint and a Faqir. He was the founder of many musical instruments and Urdu. According to Mir Khurd, that all the Qawwals of the city used to come at his Jamat Khana and in his guidance they raised music to the height of a sublime art. They gave new flavour and vitality to the ghazals. Thus they raised the art of music to the level of a spiritual discipline.

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) became His Holiness favourite disciple and wrote about his teachings. He followed the middle path; never abandoned his courtly life; but moved towards practices of tasawwuf (Sufism). He spent most of the time in writing Khamsa.

The first of this series of Masnavi called "Khamsa-e-Khusrawi" is his Matla-ul-Anwar. This Masnavi was composed by Amir Khusro in 697 A.H/1297 A.D written within two weeks. In this Masnavi, Amir Khusro has expounded his views and attitudes towards Shariat, Tareeqat and Haqeeqat. According to him "Shara" acquires meaning when it maintains a close relation with reality i.e. when it partakes the essence of reality-love of God! If Shara is taking in or in other words if it is without "Ain" (i.e. the essence of God love) it becomes Shar (evil). Similarly his attitude towards the Sufis, of his time was very critical. It is worth quoting in this connection a few lines from his Masnavi, "Matla-ul-Anwar."

"Ah! What a shameful scene this band of pretenders to abstinence, present. They wear short sleeves (pose as Fakirs) but keep their hands stretched in begging. They pretend to obstinate but they are always in pursuit of money. They are commercialised Fakirs. How can one love God and Mammon both at one time. As God is without any shadow of dualism and does not like dualism in the path of love."

In another way he described ascent to the sanctuary of God, in a nocturnal dream in the Masnavi, as under:

"It was on account of my spiritual exercises which were free from hypocrisy, Allah Tala (God) in the middle of night blessed my eyes with immortality."

"My spiritual exercises received the cash of hope. As soon as I pocketed that cash from the heaven. Echoed loudly a voice of welcome from the invincible world!"

His spiritualism was in the philosophy of love, which he shared with all the Sufis. The depth of humanity in his poetry comes from the "Divine love–which is infinite and covers the entire cosmos."

In the Masnavi, Khusro expresses in general the life of heat, which burns like a candle in love of beauty "What is the life of a heart? It lies in its burning with the passion of love and sorrows. If a lamp ceases to burn or does not burn at all it is called a dead lamp. A heart which is captivated by a beautiful face, however hard may be, it will grow soft or melt like wax. Like most of the Sufis of his time, he opined the origin of man. The spirit of man was from God’s spirit and man was moulded in the nature of God with regard to his potential or ideal development. In a "Qaseedah", Khusro exhorts man to "swim across the ocean of firmament from end to end like the sun, and not to behave like the particles of dust dancing in the wind."

He was the man of courage and strength and spoke before the King about the value of equality of all human beings. In a verse, he observes:

"Though my value may be a little less, than that of yours, yet, if your veins were to be cut open, our blood will be of the same colour."

His different reflection of the same thought written in a prose is as under:

"Oh, Brahmin, can’t you take me into your fold, this one who rejected by Islam for no other fault but for his worship of the idol (beloved) or is it so that for a person like me who is misled. There is no access even to the presence of that idol."

Amir Khusro was free from prejudice, bigotry and fanaticism. He loved people of every religion and every country and was sympathetic towards all the creations of God. This was the common attitude amongst the Sufis who preached toleration in religious affairs and loved mankind. Love of God is identical with the lover of humanity. A love of God, according to the Sufi is that, one who loves all the creations of God and loves all human beings irrespective of caste, creed and religion.

He says, "men of insight know that man is blind and undoubtedly blind. He calls himself a lover but does not regard a Negro worth his love or devotion…….

Love is deep rooted in human nature and inclination towards another soul. Love in fact beautifies the soul and beauty of the soul resides in the love of humanity!"

Love, the Sufis believe is greater than religion, "love is the essence of all creeds." No religion is more sublime than the religion of love and longing for God. Every worshipper worships God out of love, love enslaves him. The true mystic welcomes love in any disguise. One who has a perfect insight beholds God in every thing, though one worships Him through some medium.

Animosity and aggression are against the spirit of Quran which is as follows:

"Oh, people of the book! Do not transgress the bounds of your religion. Speak nothing but the truth about Allah Tala (God)."(Quran: 4-171)

"There shall be no compulsion in religion, for the right way is clearly distinguishable from the wrong way." (Quran)

"Invite people to the way of Thy Lord in a suitable manner and with tender exhortation, and discuss things with them in an agreeable style. Thy Lord Knoweth best who hath strayed from His path and knoweth best who is guide a right…(Quran)".

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) has said:

"Love of the Beloved takes us to Kaba and to the temple of idols."

"Lovers of the Friend (God) do not consider what infidelity and faith is!"

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) states that the Hindus also believe in Oneness of God and he says:

"They confess the Oneness, the Existence and the Eternity of God. His power to create, all, after death and one existence. Love is not like a cup of wine, given to the indiscreet. Tears are not like rubies gifted to worthless one."

The Sufis believe that God reveals His secrets to His lovers. His Holiness, Mehboob-e-Elahi says: "God gives insight to His lovers, so that they understand the reality of the whole Universe".

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) holds that, an intellectual even after thinking deeply and diligently cannot comprehend the mysteries of spiritual life, and his mental effort to, understanding them gives him headache. "Wisdom at last becomes headache, consequently the Gnostics choice is madness of love."

Love of God gradually makes man,–"God-intoxicated" and he renounces his animal self and tendencies (vasanas). The lover of God should first subjugate his own self and renounce every thing except God.

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) further says:

"Put one step on your soul, the other one in His love.

No other way suits those who follow the path of love."

Amir Khusro regrets on the hostile attitude of people towards the lovers of God and says, "One who laughs at the affairs of lovers should weep at his own condition." If love is crime and if people call me an infidel because of it let them do so. I am not going to utter words in repentance as:

"Be a slave of love, O’Khusro and put your head beneath the sword."

He addressed the lovers and exclaims as under:

"Ye who have loving hearts be ready first to sacrifice your life at the onset. If at all ye wish to behold the countenance of thy Beloved."

The colour of Sufism and the flavour of His Holiness, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A) had intoxicated Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A). It was Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah called Khusro when he ascended the throne in 716 A.H./1316 A.D. Amir Khusro said good bye to merry making parties and withdrawn himself and said:

"My heart is now satisfied with all sorts of pleasures and my mind has grown averse to haughtiness. My ears do not now respond to the call of Saqi to have a goblet of wine."

"Nor do I respond now to the bows (salams) of long necked flasks. My intellect has grown ripe in the fire of my old age. No longer do I entertain any greed or avarice in my heart."

Reflecting in the love of His Holiness Mehboob-e-Elahi, Amir Khusro said:

"Love of anything, except God, makes death difficult and painful, where as death is easier and agreeable to the lover of God, who is dearer to Him than anything else, his death is a change for the better which makes him immortal and lovable in the eyes of men and of God. Death overcomes man but the lover of God overcomes death."

He further states, "the lovers when want to behold thee, have got to suffer in hundred ways, but only one consolation they have, their death becomes easy for them".

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) was a mild, sympathetic, benevolent, righteous and God-fearing Sufi. He was not proud and haughty. He disliked flattery which is written in his Odes (Qaasid). He regularly wrote Odes (Qasaid) to earn his livelihood. In his "Bahrul Abrar" he says:

"Kings drum is empty and all its noise a headache. Whoever is contented with dry and wet (morsel) is like a king of lands and water."

"Man hidden in rugs is like a king of the world.

Whatever he earned, he gave all of it in charity and lived a simple life. Thus the mystics and Sufis taught mankind to have a simple and good life. They preferred poverty to wealth, pomp, luxury and sensuality. Prophet Muhammed (P.B.U.H.) was proud of his poverty and said, "Poverty is my pride." This saying of His was taken as the watch word of all Sufi Orders. The Prophet also said:

"Poverty is glorious to those who are worthy of it."

"Hazrat Ali (R.A) advises, "let not poverty and misfortune distress you. For as gold is tried in the fire, the believer is exposed to trials. More over riches and poverty are not the factors that determine man’s satisfaction and happiness. It all depend on man’s inner feelings and love for God".

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) reminds us of the danger and evil consequences of being rich and pleasure loving and says:

"If you want to be far from countless sorrows.

Be happy and contended with your meagre fortunes.

Blessed one the souls that passed away and were clean like the sun. And who did not cast even their shadow on the wealth of the world. Life is always full of ups and downs, inconsistency and instability, the superior becomes inferior, the powerful becomes powerless, and the lively becomes lifeless."

Hazrat Amir Khusro once said:

"The monarchs who were once the crowns in the heads of the people, see what remains of them now just the dust on the feet of people!"

"Heads of all the kings who are now concealed under the ground were the heads which were once raised up high in sky. You cannot earn wealth and status by worshipping the king like a dog. Be at the service of a dervish for this is a more respectable way of reaching glory!"

"Man with an insight even if he is covered in rugs rules the world, the sword may be sheathed and yet it protects the country."

"The egoism (Nafs) eats dust when the Radiance sheds lustre upon you, the shadow falls under the feet when the sunshines over the head."

"Oh, God bestow your favour upon me throughout the life. To enable me perform my duties toward God and the Prophet."

His Holiness’s own life was a living example of the mystic experience. Mystic traditions were inherited from saints and poets into the whole being of Amir Khusro (R.A). It can rightly be said that Khusro was the very soul of His Holiness. As once said by His Holiness that if it were permissible by Islamic law he would have willed that Khusro be buried in the same grave.

The moral teachings found in the writings of Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) and the feeling of fraternity found in his behavior towards the common man is an ample proof of the characteristics of the Chishti Order which he so deeply imbibed at the feet of His Holiness.

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) was a great poet, writer and a Sufi fakir till his last breath. The end came suddenly between the Master and the disciple. Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) was in Lakhnawti. Upon news of his illness, Hazrat Amir Khusro came back to Delhi but in vain to find that the Light was put off. He stood there seeing his Beloved Master who had left him alone. With his tearful eyes and heavy mournful heart he broke down and uttered a loveable memorable couplet:

"Gori sove sej per mukh per dare kes
chal Khusro ghar apne, ren bhayi chahun des."

("O, handsome you are sleeping on a nice bed covering your face with the hair, when every where is darkness, so Khusro you leave this world.")

Hazrat Amir Khurd (R.A) writes in ‘Siyarul Aulia’: that "Immediately when Khusro arrived to Delhi he went to the grave of His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A), where he blackend his face and rolled over in dust in utter grief tearing his garments." Six months after the event in the same year on 18^th shawwal 725H/1325 A.D. on the same day His Holiness broken-hearted disciple Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) left this enchanting world of colours and conflicts.

(4) Son of an Indian Soil

A legend is there that when Hazrat Amir Khusro’s first saw His Holiness Hazrat Syed Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A). It is said that young Amir Khusro went to His Holiness khanqah, but did not entered and remained at the door by remarking, "I shall select my "Peer" myself, and if it is bestowed with Divine Power he will converse with me even from distance." Thus sitting at the door he composed:

Tu an Shah-e-ke bar aiwan-e-qasrat.
Kabutar gar nashinad baz garded.
Gharib-e mustanande baradar amad.
Be ayat andar un ya baz gardad.

(You are such a mighty King that if a pigeon sits on your palace, it turns into a hawk. An outsider and a needy person has come at your door, please let him know whether he should come in, or go away).His Holiness who had supernatural powers sent him the following verse in reply:

"Biya yet andarun marde haqiqat,
Kibama yak nafas hamraz gardad,
Agar ablah buwad an mard nadan,
Azan rahe ki amad baz gardad."

(The person who knows the truth may come inside so that we may exchange divine secrets between us for a moment. If that person is ignorant, then he should return on the same path from where he has come here.)

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) immediately got up and ran to His Holiness and fell on his feet and wept! His Holiness accepted him as his disciple (murid) and gradually the two became inseparable and attached to each other.

Love is deep rooted in human nature. Every Soul has a natural inclination towards another soul. Love in fact, –beautifies the soul, and beauty of the soul resides in love for humanity. Love, the Sufis believe is greater than religion. Love is the essence of all creeds. Every worshiper worships God out of Love. Love enslaves him. The true majestic welcomes love whatever its guise. One who has a perfect insight beholds God in everything.

God is both transcendent and immanent. He is the essence of all existence. The whole universe is a manifestation of Allah Tala (God). His Oneness appear in diversity. Quran points out:

"Which ever way you turn, to God belongs the east and the west there is the face of Allah Tala. He is Omnipresent and All Knowing (Quran 2:115)."

"Are they still in doubt as to their beholding the countenance of God? Do they not realise that God encompasseth all things? (Quran 41:54)."

"When my servants question you about Me, tell them that I am near (with them)." (Quran 2:186)

"Quran Sharif also points out "God is nearer to man than to any other thing."

Man himself is a mysterious being. His soul, spiritual powers, insights, intuitive faculties, contact with ultimate Reality and several other things have made him an enigma.

The Holy Prophet says:

"I am creating man from dry clay from black moulded loam. When I have fashioned him and breathed My spirit into him…" Quran (15:29).

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) says:

"Ashiqui um kah gar a waz dahi jane mera
Dost az seenah um awaz bar arad kah manam."

(I am a lover, if any one calls my Soul)

My beloved responds from inside my breast saying it is ‘I’.

He also believes that his beloved God is omnipresent in his essence:

Hasti man rafat va qayalish ba mamand,
In kah tu beeni nah manam balkeh oost.

(My entity has disappeared, now I think only of Him. That which you actually see is not me but He.)

Allah Tala (God) is the most important Being for the mystics to contemplate on. They hold that it is beyond the limits of human mind to apprehend God and to circumscribe Him. Hazrat Amir Khusro argues that even with the help of mental and intellectual faculties it is not possible to apprehend Allah Tala (God):

"Dar niyai bih fahm aliman
Darnah gan ji bih wahm admiyan."

(Thou cannot be comprehended by worldly people. Thou cannot be confined to the imagination of man.)

Man himself is a mysterious universe unto himself with all his mental powers he cannot understand his own self. How can it be possible to understand Allah Tala?Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) states:

"Ankh khud rashanaqat nah tu aanad,
A free nandah ra kuja danad."

(A man who cannot conceive his own self, can he ever be able to conceive his Creator?)Thus, said the Prophet (S.A.W.):

Man Arafa Nafsa hu
Faqad Arafa Rabba hu

(Those who realised himself has realised the Allah Tala (God)).

Hazrat Baba Fariduddin Ganj Shakar (R.A) advises that:

"Do not insult a man by a bad word. For in everyone genuine Lord lives."

Hazrat Abu Sayeed Abul Khair (R.A) says:"I went to the the church of the Christians and the place of the Jews. And saw that both are facing you.
The desire to meet You took to me to the temple of Idols (Hindus)
And I heard the idols singing Your love songs."

Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) though he was distinguished in Suluk, and Tariqat (Way of God) and was also a great patriot to his mother land. He used to quote a saying of Prophet (PBUH):

"Love of country is like Love of religion."

This is according to the Tradition (Hadees):

"Oh, group of believers! Love of the country is certainly like the real faith (in religion)."Hazrat Amir Khusro (R.A) believed, India with its beauty - is a Paradise on the earth!.He said:

"Kishwere Hind Ast Bahashti Bih Zameen".India is a country like Paradise on the earth."Falak az u jumla amad hindustan bar tar guft har chah az ameen kishwer amad."(The heavens said that all the countries which have come of the earth. Among them all only Hindustan (India) has come up to the height of excellence.)He himself refers indirectly and said:"Singing like a parrot, in the ancient bower (dwelling),
Is the lot of Khusro blessed with Almighty Power."

Hazrat Abul Hassan said that Amir Khusro heart was equally capable of responding with all the swirl and glow of passion, to the love of the Infinite. It is the cosmic emotion that vibrated through all his mystical ghazals, and they seem to have emerged out of the souls encounter with the Absolute.

(5) Writings and Works:

Works of Khusro can be classified into four categories–Diwan work, romantic work, historical work and prose works. Khusro was well conversant in Arabic Persian and Hindi. He was proud of it. He is also famous for many verse-riddles, sayings, puzzles and ghazals. His Persian–Hindi dictionary entitled Khalikbari is also a famous work. He is considered a symbol of the integrated culture of India.

I. Diwans (Collection of ghazals, lyrical poems, panegerics elegies, etc.)

1.     Tohfat-us-Sighar (Gift of Youth) poem written between the 16^th and 19^th year of his age. Compiled in 672 A.H./1272 A.D.

2.     Wasthul Hayath (Meridian of life): Poems written between 19^th and 24^th year of his age. compiled in 683 A.H./1283 A.D.

3.     Ghurrathul – Kamal (Prime of perfection): The most important of the five Diwans containing poems written between the 34^th and 43^rd year of his age. compiled in 694 A.H./1294 A.D.

4.     Baqiya Naqiya (Remnants of Purity): Compiled in his 64^th year of his age in 716 A.H./1316 A.D

5.     Nihayatul Kamal (Pinacle of Perfection): The last collection of poems compiled in 725 A.H./1325 A.D

II. Masnawis: The five masnawis modelled on the Khamsa (five masnawis) of Ilyas bin Yusuf Nizami Ganjavi (541 A.H./602 A.H./1114 A.D./1202 A.D.) and consisting of:

1.     Matlaul - Anwar (Dawn of lights) on ethics and morals.

2.     Khusro - Shirin, a legendary love story.

3.     Majnun-o-Laila, also legendary love story.

4.     Aina-e-Sikandari (Mirror of Alexander) on events in the life of Alexander the great.

5.     Hasht Behisth (Eight Paradises) Stories told by Princesses with an introduction.

The first three of these Masnawis were compiled in 699 A.H./1299 A.D. and the last two in 701 A.H./1301 A.D. and 702 A.H./1302 A.D. respectively.

III. Historical Masnawis:

1.     Qiran-us-Sadain (conjuction of two auspicious stars) composed at the request of Moizuddin Kaiqabad (687 A.H./1287-690 A.H./1290 A.D.) After the poets return from Awadh, the main theme being the encounter of kaiqabad and his father, Bughra Khan, Governor of Lakhnawti their meeting and final reconciliation. Compiled in 689 A.H./1289 A.D.

2.     Mifta-ul-Futuh (Key of victories): Describes the four victories of Jalaluddin Firoze Khilji (690 A.H./1290 A.D.-695 A.H./1295 A.D) in of one year. Compiled in 691 A.H./1291 A.D

3.     Ashiqe (Duval Rani And Khizer Khan): Story of love of Khizer Khan for Duval Rani and its tragic end, completed in 715 A.H./1315 A.D. but with a chapter added later.

4.     Nuh Sipehr (Nine Skies): Panegyrics to Mubarak Shah Khilji (716 A.H./1316 A.D.-720 A.H./1320 A.D.) divided into nine parts of unequal lengths, each called a sipehr, and describing the buildings constructed by Mubarak Shah. Compiled in 718 A.H./1318 A.D.

5.     Tughlaq Nama: Accounts of the victories of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq and a short history of his reign. Compiled in 725 A.H./1325 A.D.

IV. Prose Works:

1.     Khazainul-Futuh (Treasuries of Victories): Contains s short history of reign of the Allauddin Khilji in which the events that took place between 695 A.H./1295 A.D. and 711 A.H./1311 A.D. are recorded. Compiled in 711 A.H./1311 A.D.

2.     Afzalul Fawaed (Greatest of Blessings): Containing the teachings of His Holiness Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia (R.A.) (637 A.H./1237 A.D.-725 A.H./1325 A.D.) with dates of his meetings with the master between 714 A.H./1314 A.D and 719 A.H./1319 A.D.

3.     Ejaz-e-Khusravi (Inspiration of Khusro): Containing five manuals on the art of writing prose and poetry and including some of his early letters to his friends. The first four manuals were compiled in 683 A.H./1283 A.D. and the last in 720 A.H./1320 A.D.

Yours sincerely

Dr. Syed Mohd. Yahya. Saba

Dept. of Urdu

Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007

E-mail: urisath@yahoo.com 
http://people.du.ac.in/~mysaba/
http://penforpeace.blogspot.in/

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