KARACHI: Today marks the 200th death anniversary of poet Mir Taqi Mir. His original name was Muhammad Taqi and takhallus (pen name) was Mir. He was a leading Urdu poet of the eighteenth century. He is respected as one of the pioneers who gave shape to the Urdu language itself. He was one of the principal poets of the Delhi School of the Urdu ghazal and remains arguably the foremost name in Urdu poetry.
Born in Agra, India (called Akbarabad at the time), ruled by the Mughals at the time. He left for Delhi, at the age of 11, following his father's death.
His philosophy of life was formed primarily from his father, whose emphasis on the importance of love and the value of compassion remained with him through his life and imbued in his poetry.
At Delhi, he finished his education and joined a group of nobility as a courtier-poet. He lived much of his life in Mughal Delhi. Kuchha Chelan, located in famous grain market Khari Baoli, in Old Delhi was his address at that time.
However, after Ahmad Shah Abdali's sack of Delhi each year starting 1748, he eventually moved to the court of Asaf-ud-Daulah in Lucknow, at the king's invitation. Distressed to witness the plundering of his beloved Delhi, he gave vent to his feelings through some of his couplets.
He remained in Lucknow for the remainder of his life. He died in Lucknow, of a purgative overdose, on 20 September 1810.
Mir's literary reputation is anchored on his ghazals. Mir lived at a time when Urdu language and poetry was at a formative stage - and Mir's instinctive aesthetic sense helped him strike a balance between the indigenous expression and new enrichment coming in from Persian imagery and idiom, to constitute the new elite language known as Rekhta or Hindui.
Basing his language on his native Hindustani, he leavened it with a sprinkling of Persian diction and phraseology, and created a poetic language at once simple, natural and elegant, which was to guide generations of future poets.
After his move to Lucknow, his beloved daughter died, followed by his son, and then his wife. This, together with other earlier setbacks (including his traumatic stages in Delhi) lends a strong pathos to much of his writing - and indeed Mir is noted for his poetry of pathos and melancholy.
What Mir was practicing was probably the “Malamati” or “Blameworthy” aspect of the Sufi tradition. Using this technique, a person ascribes to oneself an unconventional aspect of a person or society, and then plays out its results, either in action or in verse. He was a prolific writer.
His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of 6 dewans, containing 13,585 couplets comprising all kinds of poetic forms: ghazal, masnavi, qasida, rubai, mustezaad, satire, etc
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