THE BOOK OF MUGHAL POETS Anthology of Poetry Under the Reigns of the Mughal Emperors of India (1526-1857) Translations & Introduction Paul Smith CONTENTS: The Mughal Empire, Emperor Babur, Emperor Humayun, Emperor Akbar, Emperor Jahangir, Emperor Shah Jahan, Emperor Aurangzeb, Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. Sufis & Dervishes: Their Art and Use of Poetry, The Main Forms in Persian, Urdu & Pushtu Poetry of the Indian Sub-Continent. Poets in the Reign of Babur: Babur, Wafa'i, Farighi, Haqiri. Poets in the Reign of Humayun: Humayun, Kamran, Nadiri, Bayram. Poets in the Reign of Akbar: Akbar, Ghazali, Maili, Kahi, Faizi, Urfi, Nami, Hayati, Qutub Shah, Naziri. Poets in the Reign of Jahangir: Jahangir, Rahim, Talib, Shikebi, Tausani, Qasim. Poets in the Reign of Shah Jahan: Qudsi, Sa'ib, Kalim. Poets in Reign of Aurangzeb: Dara Shikoh, Mullah Shah, Sarmad, Khushal, Nasir Ali, Makhfi, Wali, Bedil. Poets in the Reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar: Zafar, Zauq, Ghalib, Momin, Shefta, Dagh. The correct rhyme-structures have been kept and the meaning of these beautiful, powerful, sometimes mystical poems. Large Format Paperback 7" x 10" Pages 544. COMMENTS ON PAUL SMITH'S TRANSLATION OF HAFIZ'S 'DIVAN'. "It is not a joke... the English version of ALL the ghazals of Hafiz is a great feat and of paramount importance. I am astonished. If he comes to Iran I will kiss the fingertips that wrote such a masterpiece inspired by the Creator of all." Dr. Mir Mohammad Taghavi (Dr. of Literature) Tehran. "Superb translations. 99% Hafiz 1% Paul Smith." Ali Akbar Shapurzman, translator in English into Persian and knower of Hafiz's Divan off by heart. "I was very impressed with the beauty of these books." Dr. R.K. Barz. Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. "Smith has probably put together the greatest collection of literary facts and history concerning Hafiz." Daniel Ladinsky (Penguin Books author). Paul Smith is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi poets from the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Hindi, Pashtu and other languages including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Khayyam, Rudaki, Yunus Emre, Lalla Ded, Ghalib, Iqbal, Rahman Baba and others, and his own poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books and screenplays. www.newhumanitybooks.com

This in-depth study of the classical Hindi tradition brings the world of Mughal-era poetry and court culture alive for an English readership. Allison Busch draws on the perspectives of literary, social, and intellectual history to elucidate one of premodern India's most significant textual traditions, documenting the dramatic rise of a new type of professional Hindi writer while providing critical insight into the motives that animated this literary community and its patrons. Busch examines how riti literature served as an important aesthetic and political resource in the richly multicultural world of Mughal India, and provides, for the first time in a Western language, a detailed study of the fascinating oeuvre of Keshavdas, whose seminal Rasikpriya (Handbook for poetry connoisseurs, 1591) was the catalyst for a new Hindi classicism that attracted a spectacular following in the leading courts of early modern India. The circulation of Hindi literature among diverse communities during this period is testament to a remarkable pluralism that cannot be understood in terms of the nationalist logic that has constrained modern Hindi and Urdu to be "Hindu" and "Muslim" languages since the nineteenth century. With the cultural reforms ushered in by colonialism, north Indians repudiated the classical traditions of the courtly past, a complex process given extended treatment in the final chapter. Busch provides valuable insight into more than two centuries of Hindi courtly culture. Poetry of Kings also showcases the importance of bringing precolonial archives into dialogue with current debates of postcolonial theory.

MOMIN The Great Poet Mughal Urdu Poet SELECTED POEMS Translation & Introduction Paul Smith MOMIN (1801-1852). With Ghalib and Zauq, Momin Khan Momin was one of the three great poets of Delhi and his poetry was loved by the common people. The main theme in his poetry is love, in the physical sense and the human sense... earthly and real. He belonged to a family of doctors and was tall and handsome and was also a physician who was also interested in astrology, playing chess and music. Mir was one of his teachers in the art of poetry. He composed seven long masnavi poems and hundreds of ghazals and ruba'is and also composed elegies on the deaths of his many mistresses. He wrote not only in Urdu, but in Persian and Arabic which he knew perfectly. Momin was essentially a poet of the earthly love which he expressed best in the form of ghazal. In celebrating romantic love in all its manifestations, he drew upon the purity of diction, deeply nuanced phrases, and indirect modes of expression. All these made way, sometimes, for a metaphysical apprehension of the phenomenon of love and the figure of the lover (Sufism). He fell from a roof and was badly injured and using astrology predicated his own death. This is the only translation of ghazals & ruba'is and it has the correct rhyme structure of the originals. Introduction on the Urdu Language, Urdu Poetry, Life & Times & Poetry and on the ghazal. A Selected Bibliography. Large Print (16pt) Large Format ('7 x'10) Edition 120 pages. Paul Smith (b. 1945) is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi poets from the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu and other languages including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Mu'in, Amir Khusrau, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, and others, and poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books & 12 screenplays. amazon.com/authoe/smithpa

Introduction: Lingua Persica -- Mughal Persian literary culture -- The Mughal discovery of India -- Celebrating imperial cities -- Mughal Arcadia -- Conclusion: Paradise lost

'A riveting resurrection of the city of poets, the city of history, Saif Mahmood's learned and evocative book takes us to the heart of Delhi's romance with Urdu verse and aesthetics.'--Namita Gokhale Urdu poetry rules the cultural and emotional landscape of India--especially northern India and much of the Deccan--and of Pakistan. And it was in the great, ancient city of Delhi that Urdu grew to become one of the world's most beautiful languages. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, while the Mughal Empire was in decline, Delhi became the capital of a parallel kingdom--the kingdom of Urdu poetry--producing some of the greatest, most popular poets of all time. They wrote about the pleasure and pain of love, about the splendour of God and the villainy of preachers, about the seductions of wine, and about Delhi, their beloved home. This treasure of a book documents the life and work of the finest classical Urdu poets: Sauda, Dard, Mir, Ghalib, Momin, Zafar, Zauq and Daagh. Through their biographies and poetry--including their best-known ghazals--it also paints a compelling portrait of Mughal Delhi. This is a book for anyone who has ever been touched by Urdu or Delhi, by poetry or romance.

This volume delves into the literary lives of four Muslim women in pre-modern India. Three of them, Gulbadan Begam (1523-1603), the youngest daughter of Emperor Babur, Jahanara (1614-1681), the eldest daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan, and Zeb-un-Nissa (1638-1702), the eldest daughter of Emperor Aurangzeb, belonged to royalty. Thus, they were inhabitants of the Mughal 'zenana', an enigmatic liminal space of qualified autonomy and complex equations of gender politics. Amidst such constructs, Gulbadan Begam’s 'Humayun-Nama' (biography of her half-brother Humayun, reflecting on the lives of Babur’s wives and daughters), Jahanara’s hagiographies glorifying Mughal monarchy, and Zeb-un-Nissa’s free-spirited poetry that landed her in Aurangzeb’s prison, are discursive literary outputs from a position of gendered subalternity. While the subjective selves of these women never much surfaced under extant rigid conventions, their indomitable understanding of ‘home-world’ antinomies determinedly emerge from their works. This monograph explores the political imagination of these Mughal women that was constructed through statist interactions of their royal fathers and brothers, and how such knowledge percolated through the relatively cloistered communal life of the 'zenana'. The fourth woman, Habba Khatoon (1554-1609), famously known as ‘the Nightingale of Kashmir’, offers an interesting counterpoint to her royal peers. As a common woman who married into royalty (her husband Yusuf Shah Chak was the ruler of Kashmir in 1579-1586), her happiness was short-lived with her husband being treacherously exiled by Emperor Akbar. Khatoon’s verse, which voices the pangs of separation, was that of an ascetic who allegedly roamed the valley, and is famed to have introduced the ‘lol’ (lyric) into Kashmiri poetry. Across genres and social positions of all these writers, this volume intends to cast hitherto unfocused light on the emergent literary sensibilities shown by Muslim women in pre-modern India.