Mirza Ghalib

In Akbarabad

Mirza Asadullah Khan was born in 1797 to Abdullah Beg Khan and his wife Izzat-ul-Nisa, into a prominent family of Seljuqid Turkic ancestry who had settled in India. His father died when he was five, following which his uncle, Nasrullah Beg Khan, became his guardian. When Mirza Asadullah Khan was nine, his uncle, too, died. Thereafter, he and his family became entitled to a stipend from the British authorities in India as a dependent and was raised in his maternal grandparents’ house. During this period Khan is believed to have studied history, theology, classical literature, philosophy, grammar, and ethics. He began composing poetry as a child—it is believed that he wrote his first poem at age eight and a masnavi (narrative poem) at about 11.

In Delhi

Mirza Asadullah Khan was married to Umrao Begum, the daughter of a noble family in Delhi, at age 13. His father-in-law, Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh Ma‘ruf, was a prominent poet. The marriage prompted Asadullah Khan’s move from Akbarabad to Delhi. After moving many times, in 1852 he finally settled in the Ballimaran area of Delhi (in present-day Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi). Like many poets in his time, he adopted a pen name (takhallus): “Asad” early on, but he later changed it to “Ghalib,” meaning “superior,” most probably because there was another author using the name Asad. In Delhi, Ghalib soon entered the company of the capital’s intellectual and cultural elite, developing his poetic craft amid gatherings of established Urdu and Persian poets.

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A Study of Poetry

Ghalib’s engagement with poetry was shaped by a deliberate immersion in the Indo-Persian literary culture. By his mid-teens he was already composing Urdu verse and absorbing the complex works of Persian masters—especially Mirza Bedil—the influence of which would leave a deep imprint on his earliest work. Before he was 20, he had compiled a divan of Urdu poetry. Although he would later reject or revise much of this early material, it was through these initial compositions that his literary career properly took shape.

Ghalib’s personal life was far from easy. He lived on loans and was dependent on patronage. He had no regular source of income. The stipend he inherited from his family was largely lost or withheld under the British administration. In the 1820s he traveled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to plead his case with the British governor-general. During this journey he was exposed to a more cosmopolitan society than Delhi, which presented opportunities to meet traders and diplomats from Iran. This is perhaps one of the reasons that he moved away from writing poetry mostly in Urdu to writing in Persian. He returned to Delhi a few years later, having failed to restore his stipend.

Ghalib’s financial struggles were accompanied by personal misfortunes. He and his wife had seven children, all of which died in their infancy, leaving Ghalib and his wife without a surviving heir. Ghalib adopted his nephew, but he also died prematurely. Ghalib’s reputation as a poet grew despite his personal struggles. By his late teens he was recognized in elite circles as an accomplished poet.

Imprisonment in 1847

In 1847 Ghalib was convicted by the colonial authorities of promoting gambling at his Delhi residence and was sentenced to six months in prison and a monetary fine. Ghalib ultimately served about half the term and was released on parole after roughly three months.

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Mughal patronage

After his release from prison, Ghalib made new connections that put him in touch with the Mughal court. Nasir ud Din, also known as Kale Shah, spiritual adviser to then Mughal king Bahadur Shah II, became one of Ghalib’s acquaintances. Kale Shah provided Ghalib with free housing and a connection to the Mughal court that would bear fruit in 1850, when the court physician arranged for Ghalib to undertake the writing of a Persian history of the Mughal dynasty.

By all accounts, Ghalib was not enthusiastic about writing such a work, owing mainly to his disinterest in historical study. Partawistan (“The Land of Radiance”), as he planned to title the work, thus progressed slowly. Nevertheless he completed the first volume, called Mihr-i Nimroz (“The Sun at Midday”), which covered a span of time from the creation of the universe to the rule of Humayun. The volume was published in 1854. The second volume of Partawistan, Mah-i Nimmah (“The Moon at Mid-Month”), was to cover the rule of Akbar through to the rule of Bahadur Shah II, but it was never published.

The year 1854 also saw Ghalib’s career prosper—he secured a stipend from the king of Awadh for panegyrics he had written for him and became the ustad (literary master) of the heir-apparent at the Mughal court. With the death of Bahadur Shah’s court poet and Ghalib’s literary rival, Zauq, Ghalib was chosen as the Mughal king’s new ustad and the new Mughal poet laureate, which earned him an additional stipend.

Dastanbu

Even as Ghalib was finally enjoying the fruit of recognition at the Mughal court, tensions between the British colonial administration and the people of India were growing. Ever since its victory in the Battle of Plassey, the British East India Company had been consolidating its position in the Indian subcontinent. Indians resented the cultural incursions and growing political power of the company. This resulted in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, led by East India Company troops (sepoys), that spread widely across the subcontinent. The Rebellion ultimately failed, bringing reprisals from the company. Ghalib’s patron, the Mughal king, whose power was already waning before 1857, was exiled, and his heirs were killed. With the effective end of Mughal rule came the British raj, in which administration by the East India Company was replaced by direct rule by the British Crown and Parliament.

Ghalib’s response to the Rebellion is famously captured in a work he later published as Dastanbu (“Posy of Flowers”), a collection of Persian diary entries from the time. He regarded the rebels who stormed Delhi unfavorably, seeing them as disrupters of the city’s peace. His response to the British during this episode is more complicated. After the effective collapse of the Mughal court with Bahadur Shah’s exile, Ghalib petitioned the colonial administration for the continuation of his pension, and he presented Dastanbu as proof of his loyalty, revising his diary entries to temper his tone toward British authority. Yet his private letters from the same period make it evident that he remained deeply uneasy with the expanding reach and conduct of British rule.

Final years

Ghalib spent his final years in Delhi, increasingly affected by ill health in a city transformed by political collapse and violence. Many of his close contemporaries had died, and the Mughal court that had lately sustained his career had all but disappeared. Despite declining strength, he continued to write letters marked by reflective melancholy, sharp wit, and a persistent engagement with literary affairs. In the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he witnessed the city he loved reduced to ruins and many friends killed or displaced in the violence. The poet lived his final years in a greatly changed Delhi under British rule—frail, indebted, yet still wielding his pen. He died on February 15, 1869, at age 71, and was buried in the Nizamuddin area close to his home in Delhi, leaving behind a legacy that would only be fully appreciated by subsequent generations.

Persian poetry

Ghalib was one of the last notable proponents of Sabk-i Hindi, a style of Persian poetry employed in the Indian subcontinent since the 16th century. The style is characterized by intricate metaphors and an intense preoccupation with inner life. Ghalib adopted these features but also added mystical and philosophical speculation to the style.

Ghalib’s standard Persian collection begins with fragmentary poems, or qit’ahs, that cover a range of subjects, from satire to a description of his cat. These are a series of poems in praise of Shiʿi figures of authority and royal figures such as Bahadur Shah II. Eleven masnavis follow, most of them mystical, philosophical, or religious in character, though one of the most well known, “Chiragh-i dair,” is written as a long ode to the city of Banaras (or Varanasi, in the modern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh). Ghalib praises Banaras for much of the first half of the masnavi, yet calls it a city of idolatry, resulting in a complicated expression of affection for the city:

ada-ye yak golestan jeleh sershar
kharami sad qayamat fatneh darbar


(their coquetry is a rose garden intoxicated and brim-full of blandishments
their graceful walking embraces the hundred turmoils of Judgment Day!)

The masnavis are followed by 64 qasidahs. The first few reflect Shiʿi subjects and praise Prophet Muhammad and Ali, followed by poems in praise of Bahadur Shah II, Queen Victoria and other British figures in India, figures from the Mughal court, and Ghalib himself.

Ghalib’s Persian ghazals, less disruptive in their adherence to form and subject than his Urdu ghazals, follow the qasidahs. Ghalib addresses the transcendence of God and the nature of perception with an introspective tone.

Urdu poetry

Ghalib’s Urdu ghazals shaped Urdu literature. He wrote more than 230 ghazals, which are now considered a cornerstone of Urdu poetry. In a sense he revolutionized ghazals. Before Ghalib, ghazals were primarily confined to themes of unrequited love, often expressing conventional imagery of pain and torment, but his ghazals explore a wide range of themes such as philosophical musings, melancholy, impoverishment, and reflections on various other aspects of life. Ghalib is known for expressing deep truths through paradoxes, witticisms, and metaphors. He wrote in a highly Persianized Urdu. His diction, often criticized in his time for its difficulty, has since been praised for stretching the expressive potential of Urdu. A shayari (Urdu poetic form) by Ghalib goes:

hazaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nikle
bahut nikle mire arman lekin phir bhi kam nikle


(I have a thousand yearnings, each one afflicts me so
Many were fulfilled for sure, not enough although)

While Ghalib is primarily celebrated for his ghazals, his rubaiis also reflect his philosophical temperament. Through rubaiis, Ghalib explored the themes of love, morality, and mysticism.