Mirza Ghalib

Mirza Ghalib is widely regarded as the greatest Urdu poet of the 19th century. He lived through the last years of Mughal Delhi, and turned that decline into some of Urdu and Persian literature’s most enduring poetry.

Must Know

• Mirza Ghalib was born on 27 December 1797, in Akbarabad, present-day Agra.
• His father died when Ghalib was only five. His uncle, Nasrullah Beg Khan, then became his guardian.
• He married Umrao Begum at age 13. The marriage prompted his move from Agra to Delhi.
• He wrote in both Urdu and Persian. He first used the pen name “Asad,” later switching to “Ghalib,” meaning “superior.”
• His Diwan-e-Ghalib, a collection of Urdu ghazals, explores love, sorrow, and philosophy. It remains his best-known work.
• He served at the Mughal court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, as a royal poet, tutor, and historian. He held the titles “Dabir-ul-Mulk” and “Najm-ud-Daula.”
• He lived through the 1857 Revolt, aged 62 at the time. The British stopped his pension afterward, since he had remained near the Mughal court.
• He died on 15 February 1869, in Delhi.

Good to Know

• Ghalib had earlier held a pension from the East India Company. He lost it over a family dispute, well before 1857.
• After the British stopped his second pension, he turned to the Nawab of Rampur for financial support, until it was eventually restored.
• Earlier still, from 1854, Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh, granted him an annual stipend of his own.
• He recorded his experience of the 1857 Revolt in Dastanbuy, a Persian prose account of Delhi during the uprising.
• He settled permanently in the Ballimaran area of Old Delhi in 1852. His haveli there still stands today.
• The Ghalib Academy, in Delhi’s Nizamuddin West, was founded in 1969 by Hakeem Abdul Hameed. India’s then-President, Dr. Zakir Hussain, inaugurated it.
• The Academy includes a museum, research library, and art gallery dedicated to Ghalib and Urdu literary heritage.

Test Yourself

Great to Know

• Ghalib reshaped the ghazal form itself. Where earlier ghazals mostly expressed romantic anguish, his poetry turned the same form toward philosophy and reflection on life.
• His writing life spans the last years of Mughal Delhi and the earliest years of direct British colonial control, making his poetry a kind of witness to that transition.
• His formal court titles sat oddly against his real financial precarity. A celebrated royal poet still had to petition repeatedly for his own pension.
• Ghalib’s poetry remains widely quoted and performed across India and Pakistan today, read in both religious and secular settings alike.