It is perplexing that Muhammad Husain Azad (1830-1910), author of the scintillating, so-called ‘first history of Urdu poetry’, Aab-i-Hayat (The Nectar of Immortality, 1880), chose to leave out Momin Khan Momin from the first edition.

Ustad Ibrahim Khan Zauq, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib and Momin Khan Momin, three great Urdu poets, were contemporaries. They lived and wrote in the first half of the 19th century. Contrary to the popular belief that the 19th century was a period of zawaal or decline, it was a time when numerous literati glittered in the firmament of Delhi.

The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was a poet as was the heir Mirza Fakhru. Dagh Dehlvi, the son of Nawab Shamsuddin Ahmad and Wazir Khanum, came of age in the environs of the royal palace when his mother married Mirza Fakhru. Some other well-known contemporary poets were Shah Naseer, Imam Bakhsh Sehbai, Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta and Mufti Sadruddin Azurdah.

Momin’s Urdu divan was published shortly after Ghalib’s in 1846. It was compiled by his pupil, Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta and published by Karimuddin Ahmad, author of the Tazkirah Tabqaat ush Shuara. Momin’s letters were collected by Hakim Ahsanullah Khan and published from Matba’ Sultani. Momin’s Persian divan was published in 1854 from the same press.

Thus, Azad’s excuse that he could not find enough information on Momin is shaky. Poet, critic and biographer Altaf Husain Hali (1837-1914), who had written Hayat-i-Javed, the biography of Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), and immortalised Ghalib with his Yadgaar-i-Ghalib (published 1896), was a mine of information on the stalwarts of the age and was a contemporary of Azad. He could have provided enough information on Momin (if asked) and eventually did do so in the second edition of Aab-i-Hayat (1883).

In the second edition of Aab-i-Hayat, Azad began his account of Momin with a prelude. In the prelude, he explained that he could not obtain enough information on the poet, therefore, he did not include him in the first edition. He went on to say that he had made amends in the second edition through the generosity of contributors:

“Now a few months before the second edition, my pleas and requests produced fervour. I am grateful to the kindness and generosity of one among the others who with the consent and advice of friends put together a few pages from scattered details…”

But Azad shortened the details provided by Hali. He gave another flimsy excuse:

“I deleted a few sentences that did not add to the account except to make it lengthier. And shortened or omitted some parts of the narrative and a lot of stories that had nothing to do with the nature of his [Momin’s] poetry. The rest I kept as it was in the original.”

I wonder at the conceit on Azad’s part in curtailing a narrative from a highly respected biographer such as Altaf Husain Hali. I am left wondering what those stories were. Why did Azad, the raconteur, leave out those stories? He did include one story about the poor Hindu man who came to Momin asking help in locating a package with money and jewellery that had been stolen.

Azad goes on to say that he received stories like this one and a few others in which Momin’s prowess as an astrologer shone brightly. There were also details about Momin’s pupils that he omitted:

“A gentleman’s letter with this and similar stories reached me. In the letter, many secrets of astrology are sparkling like stars and details of his pupils are also recorded. But I, Azad, am reluctant to include those [stories and details]. Forgive me, we are living in different times, people will say that I was writing a tazkirah of poets and began writing a tazkirah of astrologers instead.”

Fortunately for us, Azad did include a description of Momin’s persona; this description, presumably provided by Hali, became the basis of Farhatullah Beg’s vivid description in Dehli Ki Aakhri Shama. Here is the description that Azad wrote in Aab-i-Hayat:

“Colourful personality. Colourful temperament. Elegant dress sense. Tall stature. Fair complexion with a green hue [sabzah rang]. A head full of long curly hair. He would constantly run his fingers through the hair, as if combing it. Wore an angarkha made of mulmul, and pajamas with wide bottoms. The pajamas had a red belt for the drawstring [nefah].”

While Azad omitted stories about Momin’s prowess in astrology, he did include stories [latifah] about the poet’s extraordinarily sharp mind and intelligence. He admits that Momin was a master at composing chronograms; he gives many examples of this expertise.

I noticed that Azad does not get into Momin’s love affairs, his failed first marriage and his unabashed realism in sharing romantic entanglements through masnavis (long narrative poems). At one point, Azad makes an off-the-cuff remark that, for Momin, writing poetry was a form of enjoyment like astrology and chess:

“Just as chess was a kind of entertainment for him, so was astrology, ramal [fortune-telling] and poetry; he considered poetry as a means of pleasing his heart.”

In writing Aab-i-Hayat, Azad wanted to preserve a culture and its literary output that he felt was being outpaced by “modernity”. Above all, he wanted to make sure that his ustad Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq’s legacy was given the rightful place in the canon.

Azad divided his so-called history into daurs or eras. The fifth and last daur begins with Nasikh, followed by Mir Khaliq, Atash, Shah Naseer, Zauq and finally Ghalib; Momin was a later addition and Qaim Chandpuri is missing altogether. From the prelude to this era, it seems that Azad was keen to showcase both the classical and the new in poetry. Momin’s ghazals are all about love and that too of the majazi [wordly] kind.

Azad did not regard Momin as a serious poet because he doesn’t quite fit into the straitjacket that Azad designed.

The columnist is professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia in the US. X: @FarooqiMehr

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 4th, 2024