Cambridge History of Islam (4) - Urdu Literature

Authors mentioned in Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 2B (1970), Chapter 8, the last sub-section.

 

1. Amir Khusraw (1253-1325) - half in "double" language which could be read either as Persian or Urdu, wrtten for amusement of his frineds

2. Babur - biligual poems, a quarter Turkish, 3-quarters Urdu; in Diwan

3. Sayyid Muhammad 'Gesudaraz (c. 1350) - Mi'raj al-'ashiqin; treatise; first prose work in Urdu

4. Miranji Shams al-'Ushshaq - established Urdu as recognized medium of Sufi narrative verse

5. Sutlan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (1581-1611) of Golkonda - exception among Urdu poet; wrote intensely of Indian life and love

6. Mulla Wajhi - Sab ras (1635), prose allegory, free rendering of a Persian work

7. Nusrati (c. 1650) - Urdu ghazal and mathnawi

8. Wali (1668-1744) - chief representative of the Awrangabad school (in Deccan); "almost overnight switched the northern desire for poetic expression from Persian to Urdu"

9. Mirza Mazhar Jan-i Janan

10. Khwaja Mir Dard (1720-1784)

11. Mir Taqi Mir (1724-1808) - poetic genius

12. Mirza Rafi Sawda (1717-80)

13. Insah' (1757-1817)

14. Mushafi (1750-1824)

15. Rangin - invention of Rikhti (genre using segregated colloquial vocabulary of women of pleasure)

16. Jan Sahib (d. 1897) - Rikhti culmination in his effeminate work

17. Nasikh (d. 1838) - "purified" Urdu poetic diction by linguistic elimination

18. Atish (1778-1846)

19. Anis (not sure if it is a name or something else)

20. Zawq (1789-1854) - panegyrics

21. Mu'min (1800-51) - lyricism

22. Asad Allah Khan Ghalib (1796-1869) - the greatest of Urdu poets; also experiments with colloquially eloquent letters

23. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) - elevated Urdu prose to the point of scientific precision of expression

24. Shibli Nu'mani (1857-1914) - historiography; wrote monumental history of Persian literature Shi'r al-'Ajam (in Persian?)

25. Zaka Allah (d. 1910) - historiography

26. Nazir Ahmad - didactic story / modern noval

27. Altaf Husayn Hali (1837-1914) - as great a poet as he was a poet, established norms of intellectual criticism in his literary biographies and his Prolegomena on poetry; Musaddas; political poems

28. Muhammd Husayn Azad (1834-1910)

29. Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938) - by far the most influential of Urdu poets and the most dynamic intellectual personality in the recent history of Islam in the sub-continent; Masjid-i Qurtuba ('Mosque of Cordova')

[the rest covered quickly as "moderns"]

30. Hasrat - ghazal

31. Jigar - ghazal

32. Josh

33. Fayz Ahmad Fayz

34. Mir Amman - Bagh u-bahar; simple stories similar to Arabian Nights

35. Sarshar

36. Prem Chand

37. 'Abd al-Halim Sharar

38. Mirza Ruswa

39. Zazi 'Abd al-Ghaffar

40. Abu'l-'Ala' Mawdudi

41. Ghulam Ahmad Parwiz

42. Abu'l-Kalam Azad