Altaf Hussain Hali

الطاف حسین حالی

Altaf Hussain Hali in the original Urdu with a facing English translation. The first two chapters of each work are free with ads; Members and Patrons can read the full work without ads. Works can also be read in Roman Urdu and Hindi script.Altaf Hussain Hali: Poet, Critic and Reformer

Life1837–1914

Hali was born in Panipat in 1837. As a young man he ran away to Delhi to study, and there he came to know Ghalib, whose pupil and friend he became. After 1857 he worked for years as tutor and companion to the poet-nobleman Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta, then in Lahore at the Punjab Government Book Depot, revising Urdu translations of English books, an experience that changed his ideas of what poetry could do. He later taught in Delhi and, with a stipend from the Nizam of Hyderabad, devoted himself to writing. He died in Panipat in 1914.

Works by Altaf Hussain Hali

Nazm · 1905

First two chapters free

The Reward of Silence

چپ کی داد

Altaf Hussain Hali

Hali's poem of 1905 addressed to the women of India: eight stanzas on what women give the world, what they endure in their fathers' and husbands' houses, the ages of injustice they were made to bear in silence, and the dawn of their right to learning. Written by the reformer who gave Urdu the Musaddas, it remains the most moving plea for women's education in the language. Urdu text with a facing English translation; the note on the poet and the first stanza are free to read.

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