Mīr Taqī Mīr

Short biographies of Sufis.

Autobiography of Mīr Taqī Mīr, d. 1810, Urdu poet.

Remembrances recounts Mir's ancestry, his father's spiritual quest, and his own struggles to find education and patronage both in his native Agra and in Delhi. While the work may offer few glimpses into the author's private life or professional literary activity, it presents a vivid picture of political events and intrigues between 1760 and 1789, when north India witnessed extensive warfare. The Persian text, presented here in the Naskh script, includes all the author's additions and alterations properly identified and chronologically arranged, along with a newly revised English translation. Mir concludes his autobiography with a series of jokes and witty anecdotes, some of them quite risqué, that are printed here for the first time.--

"This Manuscript is unique. There was no vestige of any extant hand-writing of Mir, the greatest Urdu ghazal writer, to whom the leading Urdu poets have paid their homage. That the four Mansavis are in the original hand-writing of Mir is proved by the internal evidence furnished by the colophone, the texture and condition of the paper, the ink used and the style of penmanship. It has been acclaimed so by competent scholars and critics of art. The manuscript contains a new Masnavi of Mir, entitled the Jang Namah, describing the battle of Rohillas and Nawab Asafuddaulah of Lucknow. There is also a genuine four-coloured portrait of Mir. This epoch-making book is published with a Foreword of Moulana Abul Kalam Azad, by the eminent scholar and foremost critic of Urdu Dr. Ram Babu Saksena, Member Sahitya Akademi India (National Academy of Letters); P.E.N. (England and India); Hindustani Academy; Author of A History of Urdu Literature; Tārīkh Adab-i-Urdu; European and Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian; Album of Urdu Poets and other works.