Nusrati

Muḥammad Nuṣrat (died 1674), called Nuṣratī ('victorious'),[1] was a Deccani Urdu poet.[2]

Nusrati writing the Gulshan-i ʿishq, from a manuscript of 1743

Life

Nuṣratī was born in the Carnatic region into an elite Muslim family of Brahmin origin.[3] He lived for a time as a Sufi dervish before moving to Bījāpūr.[2] There he was made a mansabdar under Sultan ʿAlī II (r. 1656–1672) of the ʿĀdil-Shāhī dynasty.[4] For his poem ʿAlī-nāma (c. 1665), he was named poet laureate (malik al-shuʿarāʾ).[5] He died at an old age in 1674[6] or 1683.[7]

Works

Nuṣratī wrote in the Deccani variety of Urdu and Persian.[8] His poetry uses archaic language and a complex style.[2] He was a prominent practitioner of the qaṣīda, ghazal and especially mathnawī forms.[9] One of his earliest works, Miʿrāj-nāma, was written for Sultan Muḥammad ʿĀdil Shāh (r. 1627–1656).[10]

His most original work is the ʿAlī-nāma, an epic celebration of ʿAlī II's wars against the Mughals and Marathas.[11] It is the earliest panegyric of a ruler in Deccani.[4] Nuṣratī himself claimed to have invented a new poetic form with this work, which is "the only thing of its kind in Urdu".[12] It is patterned on the Persian Shāh-nāma.[13] Grahame Bailey calls it the greatest poem ever written at Bījāpūr.[10]

Nuṣratī's final poem, written in a similar vein, is Taʾrīkh-i Sikandarī (also called the Taʾrīkh-i Bahlol Khani), a celebration of Bahlol Khan's victory over Shivaji at the battle of Umrani in 1672. It was written for ʿAlī II's successor, Sikandar.[14] Unlike the ʿAlīnāma, written at the height of Bījāpūr's power, it is "largely in a minor key".[12] Other works of Nuṣratī's include Gulshan-i ʿishq (1658), a collection of odes and the lyric collection Guldasta-yi ʿishq.[15] Gulshan-i ʿishq is a highly conventional romance.[16]

Notes
  1. Saksena 1990, pp. 39–40. His (nick)name is also spelled "Naṣrat(ī)".
  2. Haywood 1995.
  3. Haywood 1995; Zaidi 1993, pp. 42–43.
  4. Saksena 1990, pp. 39–40.
  5. Haywood 1995; Sharma 2020, p. 409; Saksena 1990, pp. 39–40.
  6. Naim 2017; Sharma 2020, p. 402.
  7. Bailey 1932, pp. 28–29. Zaidi 1993, pp. 42–43, says that he died after the fall of Bījāpūr (1686) and was laureated by Sultan Aurangzeb.
  8. Sharma 2020, p. 402; Saksena 1990, pp. 39–40.
  9. Naim 2017; Haywood 1995.
  10. Bailey 1932, pp. 28–29.
  11. Haywood 1995; Sharma 2020, p. 409; Dayal 2020, p. 428.
  12. Sadiq 1995, pp. 55–56.
  13. Zaidi 1993, pp. 42–43.
  14. Dayal 2020, p. 428.
  15. Haywood 1995; Sharma 2020, p. 409; Bailey 1932, pp. 28–29.
  16. Sadiq 1995, pp. 55–56; Bailey 1932, pp. 28–29.

Works cited
  • Bailey, Thomas Grahame (1932). A History of Urdu Literature. Oxford University Press.
  • Dayal, Subah (2020). "On Heroes and History: Responding to the Shahnama in the Deccan, 1500–1800". In Overton, Keelan (ed.). Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400–1700. Indiana University Press. pp. 421–446. ISBN 978-0-253-04894-3.
  • Haywood, J. A. (1995). "Nuṣratī". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam. Volume VIII: Ned–Sam (2nd ed.). Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 154. ISBN 978-90-04-09834-3.
  • Naim, C. M. (2017). "Urdu Poetry". In Greene, Roland (ed.). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.). Princeton University Press.
  • Sadiq, Muhammad (1995) [1964]. A History of Urdu Literature (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
  • Saksena, Ram Babu (1990) [1927]. A History of Urdu Literature. Asian Educational Services.
  • Sharma, Sunil (2020). "Forging a Canon of Dakhni Literature: Translations and Retellings from Persian". In Overton, Keelan (ed.). Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400–1700. Indiana University Press. pp. 401–420. ISBN 978-0-253-04894-3.
  • Zaidi, Ali Jawad (1993). A History of Urdu Literature. Sahitya Akademi.

Further reading
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