Mir Anees: The Master of the Urdu Marsiya

Anees was born in Faizabad in 1803 into a family of poets: his father, Mir Khaliq, was a marsiya poet, and his grandfather was Mir Hasan, author of the masnavi Sihr-ul-Bayan (see What is a masnavi?). He moved to Lucknow, then the great centre of Shia culture in India, and spent his life composing and reciting marsiyas at the Muharram gatherings, famous for his commanding delivery. He died in Lucknow in 1874.

Lucknow divided into partisans of Anees and of his contemporary Mirza Dabir, who was more learned and ornate. The debate became a classic of Urdu criticism; Shibli Nomani's Muwazana-e-Anees-o-Dabir (1907) argued for Anees's superiority in naturalness, eloquence and dramatic power.

Anees's marsiyas, in six-line stanzas, tell the story of Karbala hero by hero: descriptions of the desert dawn and the burning heat, portraits of the warriors, farewells to mothers and sisters, battle scenes and the final laments. He also wrote salams and rubais. His work remains part of living devotion, recited every Muharram, as well as a high point of Urdu literature.