Person · Urdu & Persian poet · India
Mirza Ghalib
Also known as Mirza Ghalib, Ghalib, Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan
Mughal-era Urdu and Persian poet (1797–1869), born at Agra, who moved to Delhi at thirteen and spent the rest of his life there as the central poetic voice of the Mughal twilight. His Urdu divan — a few hundred ghazals selected from a much larger output he regarded as his lesser work — has shaped the Urdu language's modern literary standard, and his Persian output, which he himself valued more highly, runs to several thousand couplets. He received a court pension from Bahadur Shah Zafar as his poetic teacher from 1854, lived through the 1857 revolt from his Ballimaran haveli within sight of the Red Fort, and died at Delhi in 1869 in considerable poverty.
- Date
- 1797–1869
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His letters to his friends and students, written across four decades in a conversational Urdu that is itself a stylistic landmark, were published after his death and remain among the Urdu language's finest prose. The 1857 revolt and the British sack of Delhi that followed are described in his Dastanbuy and his correspondence with a plainness that makes them, with Zafar's own diary, the single most intimate contemporary record of the Mughal court's end.
About the place
Placed at Delhi, Ballimaran where he lived and died.
Connections (4)
- Based atDelhi
Mirza Ghalib moved to Delhi at thirteen from Agra and spent the rest of his life there — his Ballimaran haveli stood in the walled city within sight of the Red Fort, and he received a court pension from the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar from 1854 as his poetic teacher. The 1857 revolt and the British sack of Delhi that followed are described in his Dastanbuy and his correspondence with a plainness that makes them one of the most intimate contemporary records of the Mughal court's end.
- SucceededMir Taqi Mir
Mirza Ghalib explicitly took Mir Taqi Mir as his master — Ghalib's own verse routinely acknowledges that in matters of Urdu plain-speech directness Mir was the one Urdu poet he could not surpass. Mir died in 1810, thirteen years after Ghalib's birth at Agra; the two never met, but Ghalib's own practice is substantially a response to Mir's established tradition, which is why Urdu literary history treats them as a founder-successor pair.
- Affiliated withRed Fort, Delhi
Mirza Ghalib received a court pension from the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar at the Red Fort of Delhi from 1854 as his poetic teacher, and lived through the 1857 revolt and the British sack of Delhi that followed from his Ballimaran haveli within sight of the fort. His Dastanbuy and his correspondence with his students describe the Red Fort's fall, the public executions of Mughal princes, and the city's recovery through the plainest prose in Urdu literary history. The Red Fort pension ended with Zafar's deposition.
- FromAgra
Mirza Ghalib was born at Agra on 27 December 1797, in a Turkic-Mughal family that traced itself to the Aybak court of Samarkand. His father died when he was five and he was raised by his uncle, who died when Ghalib was nine, after which he moved to Delhi at the age of thirteen and spent the rest of his life there. The Agra childhood is reflected in his earliest Persian verse before his Delhi years transformed his register.