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IT is an oft-repeated lament that the glory days of the Persian language in the Indo-Pak subcontinent were over soon after the British took over. But we often forget that in the subcontinent the Arabic language, too, once held a prestigious position. Though both Persian and Arabic are still taught in India and Pakistan, they have seen better days here. A sign of the shifting sands of time is that now no government college in Karachi offers either Persian or Arabic as an elective subject, though it was possible to offer these subjects at the college level until a couple of decades ago.
The Arabic language arrived in the subcontinent before the advent of Islam as Arab seafarers and traders used to sail to the southern parts of India as early as in the 3rd century AD, as Syed Sulaiman Nadvi has mentioned in his books, titled Arab-o-Hind Ke T’alluqaat (1930) and Arbon Ki Jahaz Rani (1935). In latter days, when locals began embracing Islam, Arabic’s importance increased manifold as reciting Quran is considered of utmost importance in Islam.
Until the 18th and 19th centuries, Arabic was not only widely understood and taught in the subcontinent but it had also produced some fine native scholars, poets and prose writers of Arabic, for instance, Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan, Shibli No’mani, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Syed Abdul Hai, Abdul Aziz Memon and Abul Hasan Nadvi, to name but a few. A large number of Arabic-language periodicals too were launched here. In fact, the topic of Arabic language and literature in the subcontinent has been discussed in numerous scholarly works. Punjab University had published an entire volume on this topic in its 23-volume literary history of the region, titled Tareekh-i-Adabiyaat-i-Muslamaanaan-i-Pakistan-o-Hind (1972).
One of the biggies of Urdu literature who knew and wrote in Arabic, as well as in Persian and Urdu, was Altaf Husain Hali (1837-1914). Hali had realised that the Arabic and Persian languages were on decline in the subcontinent and began collecting his Persian and Arabic works so that they are preserved in book form, writes Dr Khursheed Rizvi in the preface to his Hali Ki Arabi Nazm-o-Nasr: Aik Mutal’a. The book has just been published by Lahore’s Ilqa publications, the publishing arm of Readings, a Lahore bookshop known for its rich and varied collections. Hali got published a collection of his Arabic and Persian poetry even before his collected poetic Urdu works and it was printed in or around November 1914, just in time before Hali’s death on Dec 31, 1914, says Khursheed Rizvi. But the collection, named Zameema-i-Urdu Kulliyaat-i-Nazm-i-Hali, did not receive the attention it deserved, proving that Hali’s apprehensions about the future of Arabic and Persian languages in the subcontinent were realistic. Interestingly, the zameema, or supplement, adds Rizvi, was a supplement that was printed even before the main work.
Khursheed Rizvi in this 206-page volume has penned a brief but comprehensive introductory chapter on Hali and his Arabic prose and verse. In the intro he says the zameema has 156 pages and out of them the Arabic text consists of just 38 pages. But Hali’s command over the Arabic and Persian languages is surprising, especially when considering the fact that Hali never received and formal schooling. Rizvi has reproduced, along with Urdu translation, Hali’s Arabic works that include poems, letters, a preface to a poetry collection, a sermon for Friday prayers, Arabic translation of two parables from Sheikh Sa’adi’s Gulistan and an essay on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Rizvi Sahib has also included samples of some translations from Arabic that Hali had rendered into Urdu.
Hali has mentioned An-Nahla, an Arabic-language newspaper launched from London in 1877. While on a visit to London, Khursheed Rizvi dug out the issues of the newspaper from the repository of London’s British Library and the book has some facsimiles of newspaper’s pages, published with due permission from British Library. In his observations, Rizvi has briefly introduced the newspaper.
Hali had translated into Urdu an Arabic work that described the basics of geology, which was, in turn, translated from French. The Urdu translation, titled Mabaadi-i-Ilm-i-Geology and published in 1883, is extremely rare and Rizvi Sahib has briefly but crisply has introduced it.
Khursheed Rizvi has — through this book — made valuable additions to what we already knew about Hali and his works. His footnotes and bibliography indeed remind one of his erudition. As we know Khursheed Rizvi is among Pakistani scholars of Arabic much respected for their knowledge and scholarship.
Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2025
