The Hamzanama or Dastan-e-Amir Hamza narrates the legendary exploits of an Arab warrior named Hamza, usually mistaken for Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib, an uncle of Muhammad. Most of the stories are extremely fanciful, "a continuous series of romantic interludes, threatening events, narrow escapes, and violent acts". The Hamzanama chronicles the fantastic adventures of Hamza as he and his band of heroes fight the enemies.
Urdu poetry is a tradition of poetry and has many different forms. Today, it is an important part of the culture of India and Pakistan. According to Naseer Turabi there are five major poets of Urdu: Mir Taqi Mir (d.1810), Mirza Ghalib, Mir Anees (d.1874), Muhammad Iqbal and Josh Malihabadi (d.1982). The language of Urdu reached its pinnacle under the British Raj, and it received official status. All famous writers of Urdu language including Ghalib and Iqbal were given British scholarships. Following the Partition of India in 1947, it found major poets and scholars were divided along the nationalistic lines. However, Urdu poetry is cherished in both the nations. Both the Muslims and Hindus from across the border continue the tradition.
Mir Babar Ali Anees, also known as Mir Anees was an Indian Urdu poet. He used his pen-name (takhallus) of Anees in poetry. Anees used Persian, Urdu, Arabic, and Sanskrit words in his poetry. Anis wrote prolonged Marsias, which was a custom of his times, but nowadays only selected sections are narrated even in religious ceremonies. He died in 1291 Hijra, corresponding with 1874 CE.
Urdu literature comprises the literary works, written in the Urdu language. While, It tends to be dominated by poetry, especially the verse forms of the ghazal and nazm, it has expanded into other styles of writing, including that of the short story, or afsana. Urdu literature is popular mostly in Pakistan, where Urdu is the national language, and in India, where it is an Eighth Schedule language.
Tabish Khair is an Indian English author and associate professor in the Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His books include Babu Fictions (2001), The Bus Stopped (2004), which was shortlisted for the Encore Award (UK) and The Thing About Thugs (2010), which has been shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Man Asian Literary Prize. His poem Birds of North Europe won first prize in the sixth Poetry Society All India Poetry Competition held in 1995. In 2022, he published a new Sci Fi novel, [The Body by the Shore].
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi was an Indian Urdu language poet, author, critic, and theorist. He is known for ushering modernism to Urdu literature. He formulated fresh models of literary appreciation that combined Western principles of literary criticism and subsequently applied them to Urdu literature after adapting them to address literary aesthetics native to Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Some of his notable works included Sher-e-Shor Angez (1996), Ka’i Chand The Sar-e Asman (2006), The Mirror of Beauty (2013), and The Sun that Rose from the Earth (2014). He was also the editor and publisher of the Urdu literary magazine Shabkhoon.
The Tale of the Four Dervishes, known as Bāgh-o Bahār in Urdu, is a collection of allegorical stories by Amir Khusro written in Persian in the early 13th century.
Anuradha Roy is an Indian novelist, journalist and editor. She has written five novels: An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), The Folded Earth (2011), Sleeping on Jupiter (2015), All the Lives We Never Lived (2018), and The Earthspinner (2021).
Mahmood Farooqui is an Indian writer, performer and director. He specializes in a type of story-telling known as Dastangoi. Farooqui along with his uncle Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, noted Urdu poet and literary critic, revived Dastangoi, the ancient art of Urdu story telling. He was awarded the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Pursakar in 2010 for it.
Afzal Ahmed Syed is a contemporary Urdu poet and translator, known for his mastery of both classical and modern Urdu poetic expression.
Dastangoi is a 13th century Urdu oral storytelling art form. The Persian style of dastan evolved in 16th century. One of the earliest references in print to dastangoi is a 19th-century text containing 46 volumes of the adventures of Amir Hamza titled Dastan e Amir Hamza.
Ada Jafarey, often spelled Ada Jafri, was a Pakistani poet who is regarded as the first major female Urdu poet to be published and has been called "The First Lady of Urdu Poetry". She was also an author and was considered a prominent figure in contemporary Urdu literature. She received awards from the Government of Pakistan, the Pakistan Writers' Guild, and literary societies of North America and Europe in recognition of her efforts.
AMU Literary Festival is an annual literary festival organised by Aligarh Muslim University. University Debating and Literary Club (UDLC) formerly University Literary Club of the university organises the festival. Some of the previous invitees include news anchor and author Rajdeep Sardesai, poet Keki N. Daruwalla, politician Mani Shankar Aiyar and independent journalist Rana Ayyub.
Syed Sahil Agha is a writer, author, and storyteller from New Delhi, India who specialized in the verbal art of dastangoi.
Fasana-e-Azad is an Urdu novel by Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar. It was serialized in Avadh Akhbar between 1878 and 1883 before it was published in four large volumes by the Nawal Kishore Press. The story follows a wandering character named Azad and his companion, Khoji, from the streets of late-nineteenth-century Lucknow to the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) in Constantinople and Russia. The work's status as a novel has been debated, but it is thought by most scholars to be one of the first novels in Urdu.
Bilal Tanweer is a Pakistani writer and translator from Lahore. His novel The Scatter Here Is Too Great was awarded the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize in 2014, and was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Chautauqua Prize in 2015. He received the PEN Translation Fund Grant for his translation of Muhammad Khalid Akhtar's novel Chakiwara Mein Visaal.
Abul Kalam Qasmi was an Indian scholar, literary critic, and a poet of the Urdu language who served as the dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Aligarh Muslim University. He was the editor of Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq and authored books such as The Criticism of Poetry. He translated E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel into Urdu as Novel ka Fun. He was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009, and the Ghalib Award in 2013.
Umro Ayyar or Amar Ayyar is a fictional character, an ayyār, in Tilism-e-Hoshruba, an Urdu recension of the Islamic epic Hamzanama. He was first written about during the time of Mughal Emperor Akbar and many stories and novels have been written about him since.
Ismail Merathi (1844–1917) was an Indian Urdu poet, schoolteacher, and educationist from the Mughal–British era. His poems for children like Nasihat, Barsaat, Humaari Gaye, Subah Ki Aamad, Sach Kaho, Baarish Ka Pehla Qatra, Pan Chakki, Shafaq, and several others are part of the primary school curriculum in Pakistan. He wrote many Urdu and Persian text books for school-going children.
