Muhammad Husain Azad

Muhammad Husain Azad (5 May 1830 – 22 January 1910) was an Urdu writer and scholar who wrote both prose and poetry but is mostly remembered for his prose; his best-known work is Aab-e-Hayat ("Elixir of Life"). ¹ The Urdu article gives his birth as 10 June 1830, a variant recorded in the entity data, where the English article's date, resting on Frances Pritchett's profile, is followed. ^{2 3}

Azad was born in Delhi to a Persian immigrant family, and his mother died when he was four years old. ¹ His father, Moulvi Muhammad Baqir, was educated at Delhi College, bought a printing press in early 1837 and launched the Delhi Urdu Akhbaar newspaper. ¹ Azad graduated from college in 1854 and began to help his father with his newspaper and publishing work. ¹ The Urdu article adds that he first learned from his father and under the poet Zauq, then entered Delhi College, where Nazir Ahmad and Zakaullah were among his fellow students. ²

Azad married Aghai Begum, the daughter of another Persian immigrant family. ¹ His father's newspaper supported the freedom fighters against the British empire and the restoration of the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar in Delhi during the Indian Rebellion of 1857; after the British retook Delhi they executed his father, Maulvi Muhammad Baqir, and expelled the whole joint family from their house by force. ¹ After a period of turmoil in Delhi, Azad decided to migrate to Lahore in 1861. ¹

Azad started teaching at the newly founded Government College, Lahore in 1864, and later at Oriental College, Lahore. ¹ In Lahore he came in contact with G. W. Leitner, principal of Government College and founder of the Anjuman-e-Punjab; in 1866 Azad became a regularly paid lecturer for the Anjuman and a year later its secretary. ¹ In 1887 he established the Azad Library, which earned him the title Shams-ul-Ulama ("Sun among the Learned"). ¹

Along with Altaf Hussain Hali, Azad led a movement for "natural poetry", to reform classical Urdu poetry. ¹ He declared the aim of poetry to be to arouse in the listener's heart the same effect as seeing the thing itself, rejecting the aesthetics of classical Urdu poetry, which he called artificial and involved in a "game of words". ¹ Sir Syed Ahmad Khan encouraged and supported both Hali and Azad in their effort to create a simple and realistic-looking creed of Urdu literature. ¹

Azad's works include Qisas ul-Hind ("Stories of India", 1869), Nairang-e Khiyal ("The Wonder-World of Thought", 1880), Aab-e-Hayat (1880), a chronological history of Urdu poetry, Sair-e-Iran (1886), Sukhandan-e Fars ("On Iranian Poets", completed in 1887 and published in 1907), and Darbar-e-Akbari ("The Court of Akbar", 1898). ¹ The Arabic article likewise names Aab-e-Hayat and Darbar-e-Akbari among his works. ⁴

Muhammad Husain Azad died in Lahore on 22 January 1910 at the age of 79. ¹

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Muhammad Husayn Azad, an Indian Muslim writer and poet who wrote in Urdu, is known for the unique charm of his pleasant and picturesque style and for his important role in literature and education. He was born in Delhi about 1834, the son of Mawlawi Muhammad Baqir, himself a pioneer of journalism in northern India. After the upheaval of 1857 he left Delhi, and after several years of wandering reached Lahore in 1864. He spent the rest of his life there in the education department of the Government of the Punjab, writing among other things textbooks for the study of Urdu and Persian. He made journeys to Persia and Central Asia and died at Lahore in 1910. ⁵

His best-known work is the Ab-i Hayat, a history of Urdu poetry with an introduction on the history of the Urdu language, celebrated for its subject-matter and its vivid style. Others are the Sukhandan-i Pars, on Persian philology and the development of Persian prose; the Nigaristan-i Pars, on Persian poets of India and Persia; the Nairang-i Khayal, a collection of allegorical essays translated or adapted from English; the Darbar-i Akbari, on the reign of Akbar and his court; and the Qisas-i Hind, stories from Indian history. He also collected and edited the poems of his master, Muhammad Ibrahim Zawq. ⁶

He used Azad as his pen-name. Together with Altaf Husayn Hali he is regarded as a pioneer of the new school of Urdu poetry, marked by naturalness, greater breadth of subject and treatment, and attention to thought and matter rather than language and form. ⁶