Maulana Hali
Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914) (
Urdu: مولاناالطاف حسین حالی ) was an
Urdu poet, and the last pupil of
Mirza Ghalib. He is also one of the most well-regarded biographers of Ghalib's life, and a commentator of his poetry.
Born in
Panipat in 1837, Altaf Hussain was educated in the same city and later ran away to
Delhi where he wished to gain further education in the Indo-Islamic poetic tradition. It was here he chose the cognomen of "Khastah" (The Spent One, or The Tired One). He was forced to return home, and pursued a government job until displaced by the
Mutiny of 1857. After this turning point in his life, he drifted from job to job for several years, arriving eventually in
Lahore in the mid 1870s, where he began to compose his epic poem on the request of
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the
Musaddas e-Madd o-Jazr e-Islam (An elegaic poem on the Ebb and Tide of Islam) under the new poetic pseudonym of "Hali" (The Contemporary). The
Musaddas, or
Musaddas-e-Hali, as it is often known, was published in 1879 to critical acclaim, and considered to herald the modern age of
Urdu poetry. Hali also wrote one of the earliest works of literary criticism in Urdu
'"Muqaddamah-i Shi'r-o-Sha'iri".
'
*Musaddas e-Madd o-Jazr e-Islam, better known as Musaddas-e-Hali
(An elegaic poem on the Ebb and Tide of Islam) *
Hayat-i-Javed,
(The Biography of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, now a classic)*Muqaddama-e-Sher-o-Shayari,
(A book of literary criticism in Urdu)*
List of Urdu language poets*
Urdu poetry*
Mirza Ghalib*
Hali*
About Hali*
Selected works of Hali in Urdu
