MIR Taqi Mir in one of his couplets said about Delhi:
Dilli ke na thei kooche, auraaq-i-musavvar thei
Jo shakl nazar aai, tasveer nazar aai
This can roughly be translated as: as if they were not the streets of Delhi but illustrations drawn by a painter, every countenance there I came across was a picture.
And Mir had it right because Delhi had always found itself at the crossroads of history and culture, and every person and every street of Delhi had a story of its own to tell, which was writ large upon the faces that Mir Sahib would have seen in Delhi. Right from the earliest times when local kings ruled Delhi through the centuries of invasions from the North after which Delhi was under the sovereignty of Muslim rulers --- and then was ruled by the British --- the city and its people had been experiencing such good and such bad times that they always had unusual stories to tell.
These stories are narrated by historians as well as fiction writers. Some of the books written on Delhi, its culture, history, people and parlance are remarkable. Some of such works are: Rashidul Khairi’s Dilli Ki Aakhri Bahaar, Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s Ghadar-i-Dehli Ke Afsane, Nasir Nazeer Firaq’s Laal Qile Ki Aik Jhalak, Farhatullah Baig’s Phool Valon Ki Sair, Arsh Taimuri’s Qila-i-M’ualla Ki Jhalkiyan, Vazeer Hasan Dehlvi’s Dilli Ka Aakhri Deedaar, Khwaja Muhammad Shaf’i’s Dilli Ka Sanbhala, Yousuf Bukhari Dehlvi’s Ye Dilli Hai and Ashraf Suboohi’s Dilli Ki Chand Ajeeb Hastiyan, to name but a few.
But almost all of the books named above were penned after Bazm-i-Aakhir, a book by Munshi Faizuddin Dehlvi, recording the lives of two last Mughal emperors. The book greatly inspired the next generations of ‘Dilli walas’ and they affectionately tried to capture the history and culture of their beloved city.
First published in 1885, Bazm-i-Aakhir had gone through many editions before the independence and one was published by Lahore’s Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab in 1965. Delhi Urdu Academy, too, had published an edition in 1986. Now Ather Farooqi, secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu Hind, Delhi, has rendered Bazm-i-Aakhir into English. The English version, titled The Last Gathering, is just published by Delhi’s Roli Books.
Munshi Faizuddin, the author of Urdu text, lived and was brought up in Delhi’s Red Fort where kings lived, as has written Ashraf Suboohi in his intro. His aim was not to record history but by writing Bazm-i-Aakhir he wanted “to preserve the fading relics and dying culture of Delhi”, adds Suboohi. Munshi Sahib was an attendant to Prince Mirza Muhammad Hidayat Afza, alias Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh. Interestingly, Prince Hidayat was a part of British spying network and was also responsible for the arrest of Bahadur Shah Zafar from Humayun’s tomb, writes Ather Farooqi in his very informative introductory note, recording the printing history of the book as well. The contents of the book, when first published, were verified by Prince Mirza Muhammad Sulaiman Shah, son of Prince Hidayat.
Borrowing the expression ‘auraaq-i-musavvar’ from Mir Taqi Mir, the renowned historian Khaliq Ahmed Nizami used it as the title of his book. Named Auraaq-i-Musavvar: Ehd-i-Vustaa Ki Dilli, or Illustrated Pages: Delhi in Medieval Period, it is a collection of K.A. Nizami’s research papers. It was published by Delhi University in 1972. The second and revised edition, titled Dilli Tareekh Ke Aaine Mein (Delhi as reflected in history’s mirror), was published from Delhi in 1989.
Ather Farooqi has translated this work, too, into English. Published by Oxford University Press, Delhi, the translated slim volume is tilted Delhi in Historical Perspective. It proffers three papers --- namely, ‘Delhi under the Sultanate’, ‘Delhi under the Mughals’ and ‘Ghalib’s Delhi’ --- not to mention the index.
The translation must have posed difficulty for the translator as the text is deep-seated in culture. As mentioned by Ather Farooqi in his introductory note, the text abounds in “culture-specific words, symbols, metaphor, similes, idiomatic expressions and other literary devices”.
Bazm-i-Aakhir has important clues for the historians as well as those interested in culture as it contains information on things related to Delhi’s culture. For instance, it gives the names of dishes and cuisines, details of celebrations, activities at festive occasions, details of religious rituals and rites. These rituals and festivities include both Hindi and Muslim cultural practices. Comparatively, Auraq-i-Musavvar is more scholarly and captures the essence of Delhi’s history, buildings, graveyards, shrines, streets, mosques and mushaeras.
Published in India, these two books had to be rerouted to Pakistan via third country. One hopes that this encumbrance would be over soon and the normal postal services between India and Pakistan would resume.
Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2021
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