WRITING prose is a difficult task. I mean, writing good prose. Some of the master practitioners of writing good Urdu prose, unembellished and yet impressive, belonged to Delhi. Khwaja Hasan Nizami was one of them.
But prose in Urdu was slow to start and what Urdu literature offered till the beginning of the 17th century consisted mostly of poetry. In the 17th century, as put by Dr Jameel Jalibi, the Mughal dynasty began to decline and with it the Persian language in the subcontinent. Thus began the rise of Urdu, and Urdu prose, too, began to make its presence felt. But Urdu took another century to be as mature as to offer something substantial in prose and in the 18th century some pieces were penned that can be termed literary, otherwise till then most of Urdu prose was in fact religious literature, excepting a few works such as Sab Ras (1635), written in Deccan. Strangely enough, North India remained oblivious to Urdu prose written in Deccan, or South, for quite long.
One of the earliest pieces of prose written in North India — and in Urdu — is Karbal Katha. According to Khaliq Anjum, Karbal Katha is a “free translation” of Mulla Hussain Waiz Kashifi’s Persian work Rozat-ush-Shuhada and also the first serious effort in Delhi when it comes to Urdu prose. Written in 1732-33 by Fazl-i-Ali Fazli, narrating events of Karbala, it marked the beginning of literary Urdu prose as its style was simple, though it profusely used figures of speech in the preface and the early part of almost every chapter. Aside from that, Urdu idiom and colloquialism takes over Persian rhetorical style in the book and it is an easy-to-understand Urdu version of Rozat-ush-Shuhada, which was recited at Muharram ‘majalis’ (congregations) in Iran and the subcontinent, says Dr Jalibi. As Karbala Katha was intended for women who could no longer understand Persian (with the decline of Persian), it had to be in simple Urdu, albeit today, about 290 years later, its language has become a bit obscure or archaic.
Bagh-o-Bahar is another landmark in Urdu prose. Also based on Delhi idiom, true to its name it is a garden and its flowers have not yet wilted. Written in the early decade of the 19th century, it taught us how to narrate a story in an easygoing and flowing style. About half a century down the road, we come across another milestone in the history of Urdu prose: Ghalib’s Urdu letters, written between the 1840s and 1860s. Ghalib made Urdu prose sound like a conversation between two friends, the hallmark of a truly good prose. It is unembellished yet gripping. And Ghalib was based in Delhi.
Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s Urdu prose is another good example of good Urdu prose. Nizami began writing Urdu prose in the early years of the 20th century. By then, being simple and sounding conversational had become a benchmark for Delhi’s Urdu prose, somewhat contrary to Lucknow’s literary standards that favoured ornamental language, intentionally laden with rhetorical flourishes, perhaps to court attention.
Khwaja Hasan Nizami was a strange fellow, in the true sense of the word: he was a writer, scholar, journalist, newspaper owner, mystic, publisher, book seller, educator, businessman, reformist, orator, and he even tried his hand at politics. As a writer he wrote essays, editorials, short stories, history, pen sketches, travelogues, supplications, humour, juvenile stories, posters, booklets, leaflets and what not. He would pick up ordinary and seemingly unimportant things as topics for his light essays, for instance, mosquito, a blade of grass, cricket (the insect) and a matchstick.
Hasan Nizami’s simple but fluent and persuasive prose has earned him a name among Urdu’s stylish prose writers. Most of his writings were penned extempore and it lent a conversational tone to his pieces. Sometimes his pieces sound shallow, but at times he discovers strange facts in ordinary things and discusses the profound philosophies with his apparently easygoing style. It was perhaps his keen observation and his first-hand experience of facing the cruel world head on that made him so erudite and eloquent. He had also become a yogi for a while and had visited several Hindu temples in different parts of the country.
Born Syed Ali in Basti Nizamuddin, Delhi, on 2nd of Muharram 1296 Hijri (December 27, 1878), Khwaja Hasan Nizami belonged to Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia’s family but did not like living on income from the shrine. So he worked hard to earn his bread and butter. Orphaned at an early age and deprived of formal schooling, Khwaja Hasan Nizami wrote over 100 books and booklets and thousands of articles. He launched, edited and published several newspapers and magazines, for example School Gazette, Aurton Ka Akhbar, Munaadi and Nizam-ul-Mashaaikh.
Some of his books are Begamaat Ke Aansoo, Ghadar-i-Dehli Ke Afsane, Sair-i-Dehli , Seepara-i-Dil, Chutkiyan Aur Gudgudiyan and Fir’auni Tareekh.
Khwaja Hasan Nizami died on July 31, 1955, in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2021
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