Khwaja Hasan Nizami: The Sufi Writer of Delhi

Hasan Nizami was born in 1878 into a family attached to the Nizamuddin shrine and spent most of his life there. He travelled widely, in India and the Middle East, ran his own publishing house and newspapers, and wrote hundreds of books and booklets: on Sufism, on history, on daily life, and short sketches on every imaginable subject. His readers gave him the title Musawwir-e-Fitrat, "the painter of nature". He died in Delhi in 1955.

Living in Delhi among the descendants of the Mughal house, Hasan Nizami collected their memories of 1857 and its aftermath and turned them into short, intensely felt prose pieces. The best known are gathered in Tears of the Begums (Begamat ke Aansoo); eleven more are collected here as Writings of 1857.

His Urdu is short-sentenced, musical and personal, the voice of a storyteller speaking to listeners rather than an essayist arguing with readers. It has made him one of the easiest classic Urdu prose writers for learners to enjoy. Try reading him on this site with the audio and facing translation.