>Ser Amantio di Nicolao at 14:34, 24 May 2021

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'''Insha Allah Khan''' ({{lang-ur|{{nq|اِنشا اللہ خاں}}}}; c. 1752–1817), known as '''Insha''', was an [[Urdu]] poet in the courts of Lucknow and Delhi in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A multi-talented polyglot, he was the author of the first grammar of the Urdu language, ''[[Darya-e-Latafat]]''.

==Life==

Insha's father, Sayyid Hakim Mir Masha Allah Khan was a famous physician and aristocrat. During a period of disturbance in Delhi, he moved to [[Murshidabad]] in [[Bengal]], where Nawab [[Siraj-ud-Daula]] was his patron. His son Insha was born in Murshidabad.<ref name="Datta2006">{{cite book|author=Amaresh Datta|title=''The Encyclopaedia Of Indian Literature'' (Volume Two) (Devraj To Jyoti)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zB4n3MVozbUC&pg=PA1722|accessdate=10 April 2012|date=1 January 2006|publisher=Sahitya Akademi|isbn=978-81-260-1194-0|pages=1722–}}</ref>

During the reign of [[Shah Alam II]], Insha came to Delhi. In 1780, he joined the army of [[Mirza Najaf Khan]], and later gained access to the royal court.<ref name="Datta2006" /> His poetic skills and sarcastic wit made him well-known, and also unpopular with the poets of Delhi, such as Mirza Azim Beg. After the decline of Mughal power which led to the blinding of Shah Alam II in 1788, Insha decided to try his luck in Lucknow. In 1791, he joined the court of Mirza Sulaiman Shikoh (a Mughal prince then living in exile in Lucknow), entering into a legendary rivalry with the Mirza's ''ustad'', the poet [[Mashafi]], and eventually displacing him from his position. After some years, Insha moved on to the court of [[Saadat Ali Khan II|Saadat Ali Khan]], the new ruler of [[Avadh]], an association which writers such as [[Muhammad Husain Azad]] believe led to a decline in his poetry.<ref name="Azad2003">{{cite book|author=Muhammad Husain Azad|title=''Ab-e Hayat: Shaping the Canon of Urdu Poetry''|url=https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/PK2155.H8413/247269d4.html#poet_inshaa|accessdate=10 April 2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-566634-2}}</ref> Eventually, Insha fell from the ruler's grace after making a joke at his expense. He spent his last years bereft of patronage, in poor health, till his death in 1817.<ref name="MatthewsShackle1972">{{cite book|author1=D. J. Matthews|author2=C. Shackle|author3=University of London. School of Oriental and African Studies|title=''An anthology of classical Urdu love lyrics''|url=https://archive.org/details/trent_0116301634360|url-access=registration|accessdate=10 April 2012|year=1972|publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>

==Work==

Insha was a versatile poet, who composed in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and occasionally Turkish and Punjabi. His chief works are in his diwan of Urdu and Persian ghazals, as well as a volume of poems in ''rekhti'' (imitating the colloquial speech of women). He wrote [[ghazal]]s, ''rubaiyat'' (quatrains), ''qatat'' in many languages, several Urdu and Persian [[masnavi]]s,<ref name="Datta2006" /> odes, satires, and also tried his hand at unconventional forms such as the riddle and the magic spell. His themes too are unconventional - no other poet would choose to write an entire ghazal about a woman's undergarment.<ref name="MatthewsShackle1972" /> [[Muhammad Husain Azad]] in ''[[Aab-e hayat (Azad)|Aab-e-Hayat]]'', his critical study of Urdu poetry, compiles a list of Insha's work which also includes such eccentricities as a hunting poem about [[Saadat Ali Khan II|Saadat Ali Khan]] in Persian, satires complaining about heat and flies, a poem about a wedding of elephants, and a [[masnavi]] on the subject of [[cock-fighting]].<ref name="Azad2003"/>

Apart from being an virtuoso poet, Insha was a linguist, who knew many Indian dialects intimately. He is known for two remarkable works which display aspects of this talent: ''[[Rani Ketki Ki Kahani]]'', a short romance which is one of the earliest prose works in Hindi (no Arabic or Persian words are used), and ''[[Darya-e-latafat]]'' (1807), a work in Persian on the grammar and rhetoric of the Urdu language, which also presented a linguistic study of the dialects of Delhi and Lucknow. This pioneering work established grammatical terminology used to this day.

''Rani Ketki Ki Kahani'' was adapted as a television show by [[Doordarshan]] on [[DD National]], the Indian national public broadcaster, billing it as the "first written story in Hindi".<ref>{{cite web|date=Oct 10, 2017|title=Rani Ketki Ki Kahani: Episode 01|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSFEwLbQJww|publisher=Prasar Bharati Archives}}</ref>

==Bibliography==
Works Available Online
*[https://archive.org/details/kullytiinshallhk00inshuoft Kullyat-i-Insh'allah Khan]
*[https://archive.org/details/daryayilatafat00inshuoft Dariya-i-Latafat]
*[http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/workshop2007/raniketaki_hinditext.pdf Rani Ketki Ki Kahani (in Devanagari script)]

== See also ==
*[[Taqi Abedi]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
*[http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/shacklesnell/302insha.pdf Frances W. Pritchett on ''Rani Ketki Ki Kahani'']
*[https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/PK2155.H8413/247269d4.html#poet_inshaa Muhammad Hussain Azad on Insha in the ''Aab-e-Hayat'' (English translation)]

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Urdu-language poets]]
[[Category:Urdu]]
[[Category:Urdu-language literature]]
[[Category:18th-century Indian poets]]
[[Category:Urdu-language poets from India]]
[[Category:Urdu-language writers from Mughal India]]
[[Category:Urdu-language writers from India]]
[[Category:18th-century Indian linguists]]
[[Category:Hindi-language writers]]
[[Category:Hindi-language literature]]
[[Category:19th-century Indian poets]]
[[Category:18th-century Indian Muslims]]
[[Category:19th-century Indian Muslims]]
[[Category:18th-century Indian literature]]
[[Category:19th-century Indian literature]]
[[Category:18th-century Indian people]]
[[Category:19th-century Indian people]]
[[Category:Indian magicians]]
[[Category:Riddles]]

Insha Allah Khan - Revision history

>Ser Amantio di Nicolao at 14:34, 24 May 2021