Rekhta Ke Nazeer - Nazeer Akbarabadi

About Book

Syed Wali Mohammad, known as Nazeer Akbarabadi, is the only poet of his kind in Urdu for a variety of reasons. He was born in 1735 in Delhi. There was a huge celebration at his birth as he was the only male child of his parents born after twelve daughters. He was brought up with great care and his mother took him to Agra when Delhi fell into bad days.

Nazeer received his early education in Agra. He belonged to a prosperous family and led his childhood and early life in comfort. Following the usual practice of the day, he trained himself as a soldier. He was deeply interested in sports also. When it was the time to pick on a profession for earning a livelihood, he chose to be a teacher and started teaching children at Mathura. It is said that he was a teacher to six children of Raja Vilas Rao. Later, the raja of Bharatpur and the nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah, wanted to enroll him in their courts but Nazeer did not agree to leave his place.

Nazeer was a contemporary of Meer, Sauda, Jurat, Insha, and Mushafi who stood as the vanguards of classical Urdu poetry with ghazal being nourished as the most prestigious form of poetical expression. Nazeer opened up entirely new avenues for Urdu poetry as he chose his material from life brilliantly spread all around. There is hardly any aspect of secular life that did not engage his attention. His wrote poems on all religious festivals, communal events, carnivals, sports, hobbies, and scenes and scenarios of common life which none had done before him. He evolved a diction that too entirely new for the kind of poems he wrote. There is a general misconception that Nazeer wrote only on the folk life and its various manifestations but he also wrote highly sophisticated, persianised, and creatively rich ghazals which find him a place among the elitist poets of Urdu.

About Author

फ़रहत एहसास (फ़रहतुल्लाह ख़ाँ) बहराइच (उत्तर प्रदेश) में 25 दिसम्बर 1950 को पैदा हुए। अ’लीगढ़ मुस्लिम विश्वविद्यालय में शिक्षा प्राप्ति के बा’द 1979 में दिल्ली से प्रकाशित उर्दू साप्ताहिक ‘हुजूम’ का सह-संपादन। 1987 में उर्दू दैनिक ‘क़ौमी आवाज़’ दिल्ली से जुड़े और कई वर्षों तक उस के इतवार एडीशन का संपादन किया जिस से उर्दू में रचनात्मक और वैचारिक पत्रकारिता के नए मानदंड स्थापित हुए। 1998 में जामिया मिल्लिया इस्लामिया, नई दिल्ली से जुड़े और वहाँ से प्रकाशित दो शोध-पत्रिकाओं (उर्दू, अंग्रेज़ी) के सह-संपादक के तौर पर कार्यरत रहे। इसी दौरान उन्होंने ऑल इंडिया रेडियो और बी.बी.सी. उर्दू सर्विस के लिए कार्य किया और समसामयिक विषयों पर वार्ताएँ और टिप्पणियाँ प्रसारित कीं। फ़रहत एहसास अपने वैचारिक फैलाव और अनुभवों की विशिष्टता के लिए जाने जाते हैं। उर्दू के अ’लावा, हिंदी, ब्रज, अवधी और अन्य भारतीय भाषाओं और अंग्रेजी व अन्य पश्चिमी भाषाओं के साहित्य के साथ गहरी दिलचस्पी। भारतीय और पश्चिमी दर्शन से भी अंतरंग वैचारिक संबंध। सम्प्रति ‘रेख़्ता फ़ाउंडेशन’ में मुख्य संपादक के पद पर कार्यरत।