Altaf Hussain Hali

Altaf Hussain Hali (1837 – 31 December 1914) was an Urdu poet and writer from Panipat, a leading figure of the nineteenth-century Urdu literary revival and one of the writers closest to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement. ^{1 2} He is known for his epic poem the Musaddas-e-Hali, or Musaddas-e-Madd-o-Jazr-e-Islam ("An elegiac poem on the ebb and tide of Islam", 1879), written at Sir Syed's urging, for the Muqaddama-e-Shair-o-Shairi, the first work of literary criticism in Urdu, and for his biographies of Ghalib, Saadi Shirazi and Sir Syed. ¹ Annemarie Schimmel called him the "founder of literary tradition in Urdu". ¹

He was born and died at Panipat, moving between Delhi and Lahore as a teacher, official and writer in between, and returned to his home town in 1889 to spend his last twenty-five years there. ^{1 3}

Hali was born at Panipat in 1837 to Khwaja Ezad Baksh. The sources place him in the Panipat Ansari clan and report his descent from Abu Ayyub al-Ansari (may God be pleased with him); the TDV encyclopedia adds that his ancestors came to India in the reign of Sultan Balaban (1266–1287) and settled at Panipat. ^{1 2} His father died when he was nine and his mother suffered from dementia, so he was raised by his elder brother Khwaja Imdad Husain, and at fifteen he was married, at his brother's insistence, to his cousin Islam-un-Nisa. ¹

He memorised the Qur'an under Hafiz Mumtaz Husain, studied Arabic under Haji Ibrahim Husain and Persian under Syed Jafar Ali. ¹ At seventeen he travelled to Delhi — TDV dates the journey to 1854 — to study at the madrasa opposite the Jama Masjid known as Husain Baksh ka Madrasa, staying three years (1852–1855). ^{1 2} In Delhi he showed his verse to Mirza Ghalib, who encouraged him with the famous advice: "Young man, I never advise anyone to write poetry, but to you I say, if you don't write poetry, you will be very harsh on your temperament". At this time he took the pen name "Khasta" ("the exhausted"), later changed to "Hali" ("the contemporary, the modern"). ¹

The English article also preserves an episode from his Delhi student days, drawn from Syeda Saiyidain Hameed's introduction to her edition of the Musaddas: the young Hali composed an Arabic essay supporting the dialectics of Siddiq Hasan Khan, and his teacher Maulvi Navazish Ali — identified in the article as belonging to the Hanafi school — tore it up when he saw it. The episode belongs to his educational biography; it is not an attestation of Hali's own school, and the data record treats it accordingly. ¹

After Delhi, Hali returned to Panipat and in 1856 took a post at the Collector's Office in Hisar. ^{1 4} The rebellion of 1857 was the turning point of his life: he witnessed the catastrophe, and his family sheltered a widowed girl who lived with them for the rest of her life. Her plight moved him to two poems on the condition of women, Munajaat-e-Beva (Supplication of the Widow) and Chup ki Daad (Homage to the Silent); Hameed calls him "Urdu's first feminist poet" on this account, while TDV dates Chup ki Daad to 1905 and describes it as a work on women's education. ^{1 2}

In 1863, in Delhi, he was appointed tutor to the children of Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta of Jahangirabad. The English article gives eight years in the post; TDV keeps him in the Nawab's service until the Nawab's death in 1872, and names Shefta — himself a poet — as, after Ghalib, the strongest influence on Hali's taste for simple poetry. ^{1 2} The Urdu article adds that Hali afterwards became Ghalib's student in Delhi. ⁴

In 1871 he moved to Lahore, where he worked at the Government Book Depot until 1874 correcting Urdu translations of English books — work that brought him into contact with a wide range of literature and led to the Muqaddama. ¹ At Lahore he saw the new form of mushaira in which poets were assigned a subject, begun by Muhammad Husain Azad and the Director of Public Education W. R. M. Holroyd, and composed four poems for it, among them Nishat-e-Umeed, Barkha Rut and Hubb-e-Watan; the Urdu article adds that he joined Azad in founding the Anjuman-e-Punjab. ^{1 4}

From 1874 to 1889 he taught at the Anglo Arabic School in Delhi, and there he came into contact with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who advised him to "write something like Marsiya-e-Andalus" (the dirge for Spain) on the condition of the Muslims of India — the prompting that produced the Musaddas in 1879. ¹ On its publication Sir Syed wrote to him in praise, saying he counted the poem among his own finest deeds and would answer, when asked what he had brought, "Nothing but that I got Hali to write the Musaddas"; he also called it "the mirror of the nation's condition and an elegy expressive of its grief". ¹

In 1887 the Chief Minister of Hyderabad State granted him a stipend — TDV dates the pension to 1887 — after which he retired from the school to write full-time. ^{1 2} In 1889 he returned to Panipat, where he lived with his wife for the remaining twenty-five years of his life. ¹ After Sir Syed's death he wrote his biography, Hayat-e-Javed (published 1901), and was granted the title Shamsul Ulema ("Sun among Scholars") by the government; the Urdu article and TDV date the grant to 1904. ^{1 4 2} He died at Panipat on 31 December 1914 according to all three articles and Wikidata; TDV gives 1 January 1915. ^{1 3 2}

Musaddas-e-Hali (Musaddas-e-Madd-o-Jazr-e-Islam, 1879). A long elegiac poem surveying the rise and decline of Islam. In it Hali condemned what he saw as dogmatism, obscurantism and bigotry, attributed the decline of India's Muslims to the discouragement of dissent and the placing of religious rituals above the spirit of religion, and ended by warning Muslims to repair their ship before the storm wrecked it. ¹ Apart from the first editions he dedicated the poem to the nation and took no royalties; TDV records that the poem was a source of inspiration to Muhammad Iqbal. ^{1 2}

Muqaddama-e-Shair-o-Shairi. Published as the introduction to his Divan (1890) and then on its own (1893), it is described as the first book of literary criticism in Urdu; TDV calls it the first important theoretical-critical work to use Eastern and Western concepts in Urdu literature. ^{1 2}

Biographies. Yadgar-e-Ghalib, on Mirza Ghalib (Kanpur 1897 per TDV); Hayat-e-Saadi, on Saadi Shirazi (Delhi 1884 per TDV); and Hayat-e-Javed, on Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1901). ^{1 2}

Among his poems are Shikwa-e-Hind (1887 or 1888 per TDV) and the still-popular naat "Woh Nabion Mein Rahmat Laqab Paanaywala", sung in Pakistan and India to this day. ^{2 1} His prose includes Majalis-un-Nisa (composed 1874 per TDV), a story-form work on women's education for schoolgirls, which the Urdu article says won a government prize of 400 rupees and remained in curricula for years; Tiryaq-e-Masmum (Panipat 1868 per TDV), a reply to the missionary Imaduddin; Shawahid-e-Ilham (1872 per TDV); an autobiography; and his collected letters in two volumes. ^{4 2}

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

His contemporaries and later critics credit him with remaking Urdu poetry: the Pakistani newspaper Dawn (2014) wrote that "Hali and Shibli rescued Urdu poetry", re-conceiving it toward the transformation the hour required, and quoted Maulvi Abdul Haq that outstanding poetry happens when a poet draws universal meaning from immediate events. ¹ Some scholars of Pakistani nationalism read the Musaddas as an important text in the articulation of the future Muslim nation that became Pakistan in 1947 — an interpretation the English article reports from Masood Ashraf Raja. ¹ An international seminar on Hali held in Delhi on 29 November 2001 concluded that he could not have written the Musaddas without reading at least 5,000 pages of Islamic history. ¹

TDV's own assessment is that Hali influenced Urdu literature greatly in both verse and prose, gave the thought of India's Muslims a new direction, supported Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his Aligarh modernisation movement, and became, by his frankness and sincerity, one of the most famous figures of the Islamic awakening in India. ² Pakistan Post issued a commemorative stamp in his honour on 23 March 1979 in its "Pioneers of Freedom" series, whose text calls the Musaddas one of the most inspiring poems in Urdu literature, with a lasting influence on the Muslims of the subcontinent. ¹

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