Akbar Allahabadi (Urdu satirical poet, 1846–1921)

Akbar Allahabadi, the Urdu poet whose pen-name was Akbar, used humour and satire to comment on the social and political life of British India, and was called 'the mouthpiece of the age' (Lisan al-'Asr).

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) names him Sayyid Husayn Allahabadi. He was born in 1846 at Bara, a small village near Allahabad, and received a casual and desultory schooling. After several years as a lawyer he spent many years as a judge in the service of the British government, until he retired in 1903. He died in September 1921. ¹

His chief characteristic was the use of humour and satire to press his views on political and social subjects. His frequent jeux de mots, and his skill in bending strange words, English or vernacular, to his purpose, gave him a wide popular appeal. The article reads his poetry as a running commentary on the social foibles of his contemporaries and on the political and religious currents of his time. His criticism was the impulsive reaction of a conservative mind to the Westernization of Indian life, which had been under way for a long time; the article expects that much of his topical satire will lose its interest as the things it mocked pass away. ¹

His poems were collected in four volumes, published under the title Kulliyyat-i Akbar, the first in 1909 and the fourth in 1948, and his letters were also published. Shortly before his death he composed the Gandhi-nama, which sets out the political views of the parties that took part in the anti-British movement led by M. K. Gandhi; it was edited by M. Na'im al-Rahman (Allahabad, 1948). ¹