Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan (1797–1869), who wrote under the pen names Ghalib ("dominant") and Asad ("lion"), is widely regarded as the greatest poet of the Urdu ghazal and a master of Persian verse as well. Born in Agra and settled in Delhi, he came of age as the Mughal world was disintegrating, and he served at the twilight court of the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was himself a poet. Ghalib pressed the ghazal — a compact lyric of independent couplets — to new heights of philosophical depth, irony, and emotional ambiguity, writing of love, loss, doubt, wine, and the human condition with a wit that could be playful and devastating in the same breath. He composed much of his most ambitious work in Persian, which he prized, but it is his Urdu divan that made him immortal. He lived through the catastrophe of 1857, when the failed uprising against British rule brought the sacking of Delhi and the end of the Mughal line; his letters from those years are themselves landmarks of Urdu prose, intimate, mordant, and modern in voice. Perpetually short of money and fond of describing his own misfortunes with rueful humor, Ghalib died in Delhi in 1869. His couplets are quoted, sung, and recited across India and Pakistan to this day.
Achievements
- Recognized as the foremost master of the Urdu ghazal
- A major Persian poet who prized and excelled in Persian verse
- His letters pioneered an intimate, modern style of Urdu prose
- Chronicled the fall of Mughal Delhi through the 1857 uprising
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