Naadaan Dehlvi loved two things most: poetry of Hafiz of Shiraz and Urdu lexicography. He spent years studying and working on both and came up with invaluable literary works on them. Naadaan Dehlvi was, of course, a pen name and was used mostly with his poetic works. His real name was Moulvi Muhammad Ehtishamuddin Haqqee Dehlvi.
His work on Hafiz includes Hafiz’s life and versified Urdu translation of Divan of Hafiz. Though criticised by Allama Niaz Fatehpuri and defended well by the author, the translation was widely acclaimed when first published in 1938. But his gigantic lexicographic compilation — consisting of thousands of words and idioms of Urdu with explanatory notes and illustrative citations — became somewhat disputed and till today his contribution is not acknowledged.
Haqqee’s son Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee (1917-2005) — a celebrated lexicographer, linguist, scholar, poet and critic of Urdu — has described his father’s life in his book Nukta-i-raaz (Karachi, 1972) and says that his family is a descent of Shah Abdul Haq Muhaddis Dehlvi (1551-1642), a highly respected religious scholar of Delhi, known specially for his work on Hadith.
Ehtishamuddin Haqqee was born in 1880 in Delhi. Having done his MA from Aligarh in 1906, he for some time assisted Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk (1837-1907) and later Nawab Vaqar-ul-Mulk (1841-1917), who were among the leaders of the Aligarh Movement and among the founders of the Muslim League. Then Haqqee worked at Aligarh College’s Lytton Library (later renamed as Maulana Azad Library) for many years. He also worked in the princely state of Jaora for about two years.
He fell seriously ill around 1920 and remained so for about seven years, according to Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee. During this period, he spent most of his time translating Hafiz into Urdu. Being a veteran Muslim League activist, he had become quite active in politics and participated in Muslim League’s 1926 annual Delhi meeting. In 1925, he had written a pamphlet titled ‘Reforms in the balance’, representing Muslim League’s view as it was at that time, though it did not take them long to chart a new course.
A restless soul and a workaholic as he was, he took up teaching Persian at Delhi’s Arabic College but after a brief stint he went to Hyderabad Deccan. Here in 1930, he met Baba-i-Urdu Moulvi Abdul Haq who had just begun work on his gigantic Urdu dictionary named Lughat-i-kabeer. Moulvi Abdul Haq asked him to join in and, lexicography being his first love, he began work on this feat which — though remained unfinished and could not see light of the day till decades later and that too only partially— paved the way for a 22-volume grand Urdu dictionary of the Urdu Dictionary Board. Ehtishamuddin Haqqee died in Delhi on June 1, 1945.
The controversy
Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee and some other scholars claim that the major portion of the work on Moulvi Abdul Haq’s Lughat-i-kabeer was done by Ehtishamuddin Haqqee but when the work was published his name was not mentioned among the compilers. While supporters of Moulvi Abdul Haq say that indeed Haqqee was a part of Abdul Haq’s team but his job was only to review the final draft and add or delete what he deemed fit.
In the preface to the first volume of Lughat-i-kabeer (Karachi, 1973), Jameeluddin Aali has quoted Syed Hashmi Fareedabadi (1890-1964), a scholar and a member of Abdul Haq’s team as saying that the work on the gigantic dictionary of Urdu had begun under the supervision of Moulvi Abdul Haq and “Ehtishamuddin Haqqee was appointed his assistant. He was a born writer and it was difficult to find a better helper than him for this job. But after a while some opponents of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu ascribed the entire compilation of the dictionary to Ehtishamuddin Haqqee which was an exaggeration and mischief-mongering. His [Haqqee’s] job was to arrange the entries and, if and when required, to explain and rewrite the meanings compiled by others. He used to add to the manuscript the idioms, compounds and explanatory citation confirming their usage but in most of the cases these additions were considered redundant. As a result, these additions were deleted during the revisions and reviews carried out twice and thrice. The review and revisions were carried out by a committee and by Moulvi Abdul Haq himself. The committee consisted of Moulvi Abdul Haq, Dr Abdus Sattar Siddiqui and Pandit Kaifi. To ascertain the origin of Sanskrit/Hindi and Arabic words some experts of these languages were hired. A number of people were assigned the job of finding words and their usage from authentic Urdu literary works. But Abdul Haq Sahib would check and recheck each and everything and would take part in the minute pieces of research work as well.”
To cut a long story short, a huge data was compiled on cards and the initial portions of the grand Urdu dictionary were sent to the press but in the meantime Pakistan came into being, the Anjuman’s offices were set on fire and looted and much of the work, including the rare books and manuscripts, was ransacked. A portion of the manuscript and data cards that could be salvaged was shifted to Karachi and a portion was left in Delhi as well. After the independence, Baba-i-Urdu began work on the dictionary anew in Karachi.But it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ehtishamuddin Haqqee was a great lexicographer and had begun work on his own gigantic Urdu dictionary much earlier and tirelessly worked on it for some 15 years. Sadly, this work too could not be published as most of it was affected, wrote Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee.
What prompted me to retell this old, but not forgotten, tale is the preface of the new edition of Ehtishamuddin Haqqee’s translation of Divan-i-Hafiz. Muhammad Ziauddin Ahmed Shakaib in the preface claims that the entire work on Lughat-i-kabeer was carried out by Ehtishamuddin Haqqee single-handedly but after him it was ascribed to Moulvi Abdul Haq. This old dispute was rekindled during the lifetime of Shan-ul-Haq Haqqee too but he did not like to deliberate it further. But I feel that without substantial evidence, or at least without explaining the background sufficiently, repeating this claim seems unpalatable. Since translator’s grandson Shayan Haqqee has coordinated with the publisher of this new edition, one feels that he should have seen to it that a proper explanation is given. Published by Educational Publishing House, Delhi, this versified Urdu translation is indeed a marvellous job as the translator took pains to translate the Persian ghazals of Hafiz Shirazi in the same ‘bahar’ (poetic meter) and same qafiya (rhyming word). Had this new edition included the original Persian text as well, it would have added more value to it.
drraufparekh@yahoo.com
