Person · 1802–1874 (1217–1291 AH) · born 1802 · marsia poet

Mir Babbar Ali Anis

Mir Babbar Ali Anis was a marsia poet of Lucknow whose recitations before the Nawabs of Awadh and, after 1859, in Patna, Benares, Allahabad and Hyderabad, filled halls that Saksena describes as "packed to overflowing."

Umr guzri hai isi dasht ki sa'iyaahi mein / Paanchvi pusht hai Shabbir ki maddaahi mein — "Hunting in this forest (for words) spent life I mine / Praising Hussain, fifth in progeny line" (Wikipedia, romanised Urdu as printed on the page, with the page's own English translation)

What the sources did afterwards. His own biographer could not fix his birth year: Saksena's 1927 history gives "1217 A.H. or 1216 A.H." in the same sentence, and modern reference works compound the disagreement, citing 1800, 1802 or 1803 in turn — a life whose end (Lucknow, 1291 AH/1874) is certain but whose beginning was never settled by the sources that recorded it.

Draft. This entry is an unreviewed first draft. It has not yet been checked by a subject reviewer — see sources and method.

A family and a city

Saksena records that the family was regarded in Lucknow as "a repository of the pure idioms of the Urdu language" (Saksena, p.125). He was born, Saksena writes, "in 1217 A.H. or 1216 A.H. ... at Fyzabad in one of its quarters called Gulab badi, where his father resided," and did not move to Lucknow until after his own eldest son, Nafees, had already been born to him (Saksena, p.126). His output there was vast: "Anis has written many thousands of elegies, odes, quatrains and qitas ... it is computed to contain over 250,000 distichs. His published poems extend to five volumes and the rest is preserved in his family" (Saksena, p.128).

Recitation, travels, and what the record kept

Anis recited before the Nawabs of Awadh on his own terms: he "would not go unless Wajid Ali Shah sent a special messenger to request him to recite in the assembly" (Saksena, p.126). After the 1856 annexation of Awadh he travelled to Azimabad (Patna) in 1859 and 1860 and to Hyderabad in 1871, where, Saksena writes, he recited "to thousands of people in spacious halls which were packed to overflowing" (Saksena, p.127). He described his own place in the family line in verse: "Umr guzri hai isi dasht ki sa'iyaahi mein / Paanchvi pusht hai Shabbir ki maddaahi mein" — "Hunting in this forest (for words) spent life I mine / Praising Hussain, fifth in progeny line" (Wikipedia, "Mir Anees"). He died at Lucknow in 1291 AH (1874 CE) and is buried in his own house (Saksena, p.127) — but even his birth year the record never settled: Saksena prints "1217 A.H. or 1216 A.H." in the same sentence (Saksena, p.126), and later reference works give 1800, 1802 and 1803 in turn (Wikipedia, "Mir Anees").

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