Thanks to Syed Ashoor Kazmi’s painstaking research on marsiya, we now have an exhaustive account of Urdu marsiya beginning in late 16th century and ending at the end of the 20th century. It has been published by the Educational Publishing House, Delhi under the title Urdu marsiye ka safar aur bisveen sadi ke Urdu marsiya nigar.

Poetic accounts of the tragedy of Karbala known as Shahadat Nama were already in currency. But the developed poetic expression now known as marsiya is indebted to Quli Qutab Shah for its beginning. Quli was a Deccani ruler who lived in the later half of the 16th century.

Marsiya, as developed in the form of musaddas, touched its heights in the works of Mirza Dabir and Mir Anis. Here it achieved its culminating point, more particularly in the marsiyas of Anis.

Mir Anis died in 1801. Just two years later, in 1803, Dabir also passed away. With the death of these two great masters the glorious period of marsiya, or to be more precise, of classical marsiya came to an end.

With the dawn of the 20th century a new age in Urdu literature was in sight. But in the field of marsiya no such sign was apparent. The descendents of Anis and Dabir seemed determined to keep alive the Anisian Dabirian tradition of marsiya.

But the tradition had started showing signs of decline. Soon the newly emerged generation of marsiya writers grew restive.

After all, they could not afford for long to feign indifference to the changed sensibility which had emerged in consequence of Hali and Azad’s movement of modern poetry.

From the ranks of these poets, who claimed to be modern, a distinguished poet came forward and wrote marsiyas with a changed angle of vision.

He was Josh Malihabadi. He wrote a few marsiyas in succession. That famous marsiya Husain aur inqilab, which created a stir, was written in 1941. And this was the time when the Progressive Writers Movement with its own vision of ‘Inqilab’ dominated the literary scene of Urdu.

Obviously Josh had drawn inspiration from that movement for his marsiya and in turn inspired his contemporary marsiya writers to make a breakaway from the classical tradition and think and write in the context of the present times.

Taking a cue from Josh the marsiya writers made a departure from the classical mode of marsiya expression and began trying to write marsiyas in a way that it is in tune with the spirit of the present times.

They may or may not have succeeded in this attempt. However, the desire is very much there. And this entitles them to designate their marsiyas as ‘Jadid marsiyas’.

So time passed during the 20th century the form of marsiya gradually took a new turn. The descendants of Anis and Dabir had then receded in the background. Several different marsiya writers of different backgrounds rose from different ranks.

A number of marsiya writers came from the ranks of the progressive writers. Most prominent among them was Ali Sardar Jafri. And Ashoor Kazmi is very pleased to find that the distinguished writer who had acted as his guide to progressivism is also a marsiya writer. But Jafri was hardly impressed by the newly emerged trend known as Jadid Marsiya.

He was all praise for Anis, and as he has himself committed, he had been imbibing influence from Anis since his childhood. And in his marsiyas he appears faithful to the Anisian tradition.

But while Ashoor Kazmi has accommodated all kinds of marsiya writers, mature and immature, he has in his exhaustive account ignored Faiz, who has at least one very fine marsiya to his credit.

Significantly, Faiz too made no conscious attempt to inject any kind of modernism or progressivism in his marsiya. Steeped deep in Anisian tradition, he wrote his marsiya starting with:

The night has descended and Shabbir faces an assault by the forces of torture/At this stage, there is no one to share his calamity, no friend, no sympathiser



If there is any companion, it is the darkness emanating from pain/If there is any friendly gesture, it is the heart-beat

It is the night of loneliness, forlorn and anxiety/This is the night of barrenness in Shabbir’s family

This is a short marsiya consisting of 12 ‘bunds’ and may be taken as a piece of genuine poetry ending thus:

The holy body was on the back of the horse and the head was on the soil/Below this soil was the door of the Heaven.

Of course this mammoth volume is a well researched survey of Urdu marsiya ranging from the late 16th century to the end of the 20th century. But I wonder why Ashoor Kazmi, in spite of his emphasis on the developments in the field of marsiya during the 20th century has completely ignored the significant development that resulted in the form of nazm being taken away from the ‘masaddas walla’ marsiya.

Distinguished poets like Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, Hafeez Jallundri, and most of all, Allama Iqbal, may be seen as representing this new tradition of marsiya. And marsiya written in the form of modern verse chiefly represented by Iftikhar Arif may be considered as the later development of this new tradition.

How can this newly developed marsiya tradition be ignored. It needs to be included rather than excluded from the history of Urdu marsiya.