Person · d. 1254 A.H. (1838 A.D.), Lucknow — birth year and parentage not recorded · poet and poetical reformer; "the founder of the Lucknow school of poetry" (Saksena, p.102)

Imam Bakhsh Nasikh

Sheikh Imam Baksh, who took the pen-name Nasikh ("abrogator"), is credited by Ram Babu Saksena with giving Lucknow's Urdu "the final touches to the languages" and fixing rules of diction and grammar that a school of pupils then enforced as law.

What the sources did afterwards. "His parentage is not definitely known" (Saksena, p.102) — the record of his life opens with a lawsuit, not a birth, and the same book that credits him with refounding Lucknow's Urdu closes its account of him with a flat reversal of reputation: "Posterity refuses to go into ecstacies over his verses" (Saksena, p.106).

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Adopted, disputed, exiled

Saksena's life of him begins not with a birth but a lawsuit: "His parentage is not definitely known. It is said that he was adopted by Khuda Bux, a tent maker and a wealthy merchant of Lahore who was sonless" (Saksena, p.102). When Khuda Bux died, his brothers "disputed the inheritance challenging the adoption and calling Nasikh a slave of their father"; a reconciliation broke down into "an attempt to poison Nasikh which was happily frustrated" before a court ruled in his favour (Saksena, p.102). He was educated in Persian and Arabic at "Farangi Mahal, a quarter of Lucknow noted for its erudition and boasting of a noted academy of Persian and Arabic learning" (Saksena, p.102).

Nasikh "had to leave Lucknow during the reign of Nawab Ghaziuddin Haidar who wanted to attach him to his court and to confer on him the title of 'poet-laureate'"; he "declined the offer", and after his "contemptuous reply aroused the ire of the Nawab", he "had to seek shelter in exile" and "went to Allahabad and resided there for some time" (Saksena, p.103). He later "again repaired to Lucknow in 1248 A.H. (1832 A.D.)" and "died in 1254 A.H. (1838 A.D.)" (Saksena, p.104).

The abrogator's reforms

His takhallus means abrogator, and Saksena takes it at face value: "To Nasikh belongs the credit of giving the final touches to the languages. By his very poetical surname he assumes the role of an abrogator of old forms" (Saksena, p.17). At Lucknow, by Saksena's account, "he weeded out scurrilous, indecent and obscene words which even disfigure the writings of Mir and Souda", and "it was at his time that the gender of words was finally determined and fixed" — a rule his pupils, led by Rashk, then policed (Saksena, p.106).

The same chapter that credits him with founding a school records the school's decline in critical esteem: his verses, it says, "are a triumph of conventionality and artifice", and, in the book's own verdict, "Posterity refuses to go into ecstacies over his verses" (Saksena, p.106).

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Lucknow School

Sources

17 · read as page image To Nasikh belongs the credit of giving the final touches to the languages. By his very poetical surname he assumes the role of an abrogator of old forms.
102 · read as page image Sheikh Imam Baksh poetically surnamed Nasikh (abrogator) was one of the greatest poets of Lucknow and the founder of the Lucknow school of poetry. His parentage is not definitely known.
103 · read as page image Nasikh had to leave Lucknow during the reign of Nawab Ghaziuddin Haidar who wanted to attach him to his court and to confer on him the title of 'poet-laureate'. Nasikh was cut to the quick, declined the offer... This contemptuous reply aroused the ire of the Nawab and Nasikh had to seek shelter in exile. He went to Allahabad and resided there for some time.
104 · read as page image After the death of Hakim Mahdi he again repaired to Lucknow in 1248 A.H. (1832 A.D.). He died in 1254 A.H. (1838 A.D.).
106 · read as page image He weeded out scurrilous, indecent and obscene words which even disfigure the writings of Mir and Souda. ... It was at his time that the gender of words was finally determined and fixed. ... Posterity refuses to go into ecstacies over his verses.