Azfari (Muhammad Zahir al-Din Mirza)

Muhammad Zahir al-Din Mirza 'Ali Bakht Bahadur Gurgani, known as Azfari, was a lineal descendant of Awrangzib and a grandson of 'Iffat Ara' Begum, daughter of Muhammad Mu'izz al-Din Padshah (Jahandar Shah), son of Shah 'Alam (Bahadur Shah I). He was born and educated in the Red Fort at Delhi. Like other princes of the Timurid line he received an allowance from the East India Company. In 1202 AH (1789) he decided to escape from the fort; he passed through Jaipur and Jodhpur to Lucknow, where Asaf al-Dawla, ruler of Awadh, received him. After seven years there he left for Murshidabad (Maksudabad), arriving in 1211 AH (1797). After about ten years he went to Madras, where he died in 1234 AH (1818). ²

He spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu fluently and learned a little English in the last years of his life. He studied medicine, astrology, prosody, geomancy and metrics, but was more drawn to poetry. Besides an Urdu diwan he left a large collection of verses in Persian and Turkish. ²

His chief work, the Waqi'at-i Azfari, begun at Murshidabad in 1211 AH (1797) and completed at Madras in 1221 AH (1806), gives an account of his wanderings and experiences and a valuable sketch of the brief rise of Ghulam Qadir Rohilla, who captured Delhi in 1203 AH (1788) and blinded the emperor Shah 'Alam (the entry prints the numeral as I; Shah 'Alam II was the emperor blinded). It is also of great geographical value. The works listed at the end of the memoirs are a Chaghatay Turkish dictionary (Lughat-i Turki-yi Chaghatai, compiled at Lucknow); a Persian rhymed-prose translation of 'Ali Shir Nawa'i's Turkish Mahbub al-qulub; a Turkish verse Nisab; the Tenkari Tar, a Turkish-Hindi compilation on the lines of the Khaliq-bari, erroneously ascribed to Amir Khusraw; a Persian metrical translation of the Risala-yi Qabriyya, a supposed treatise of Hippocrates on the signs of death; the Nuskha-yi Sihhat, with 109 anecdotes; a grammar of Chaghatay Turkish, composed at Patna for Rai Tika Ram; and the Fawa'id al-Mubtadi. ¹