About This Edition and Introduction

About This Edition

This book gives the complete Urdu text, with an English translation, of *Banat-un-Nash* ("The Daughters of the Bier", the Arabic name of the seven stars of the Great Bear) by Deputy Nazir Ahmad (1830/31–1912). It was written about 1872 as the second part of his *Mirat-ul-Uroos* (1869), and continues the story of Asghari, the capable heroine of that book, who now keeps a school for girls in her house in Delhi.

Source of the Urdu text: a Delhi reprint published by the author's grandson, Muhammad Muslim Ahmad, catalogued with the date 1950. The scan, made from the copy in the Allama Iqbal Library of the University of Kashmir, is freely available on the Internet Archive (archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.498588, from the Digital Library of India). The book runs to 221 printed pages. The text was transcribed page by page from the scan for this edition.

What is included and what is left out: the whole of Nazir Ahmad's text is given, from his preface to the closing word *faqat* ("the end"), with the author's own footnotes, which explain hard words and phrases. Left out, as later editorial matter: the publisher's afterword (*khatima*) signed by Muhammad Muslim Ahmad, and two footnotes that speak of Nazir Ahmad in the third person and so were added by a later publisher. A few of the author's notes were added in a later printing during his lifetime (one is dated 1888); they are kept, and a translator's note says so where it matters. Where the scan is cut off, blurred or blank, the gap is marked [illegible], and where the printing itself has dots in place of words, a translator's note says so. Readings that are possible but uncertain are kept as printed. Nothing has been supplied to fill a gap.

Arrangement: Nazir Ahmad divides the book into titled sections, which are kept here as chapters with his own headings; a chapter that holds two of his sections keeps both headings. The author's footnotes are collected at the end of each chapter. Page numbers and running heads are left out.

Translation: the translation is faithful and complete, in plain modern English, with nothing summarised or skipped. The book is mostly dialogue, and the dialogue is kept as dialogue, with each speaker's name as printed. Arabic and Persian quotations, verses and sayings are translated, with the originals in the facing Urdu column. Key terms are kept in italics with a short gloss and explained in the glossary at the end. Nazir Ahmad's science and geography are those of the 1870s, and his views of the English, of the Revolt of 1857, of villagers and of women are those of a Muslim official of his time; all are translated as he wrote them, without comment except where a fact needs explaining. Translator's notes are marked [TN: ...].

Copyright: Nazir Ahmad died in 1912, and *Banat-un-Nash* was first published in the 1870s, so the text is in the public domain in Pakistan, India and the United States. The English translation is new.

Introduction

Nazir Ahmad was born in 1830 or 1831 at Rehar in the Bijnor district, the son of a poor scholarly family. He was sent to Delhi as a boy to study in a mosque school, and then at Delhi College, where he learned Arabic and later English. He entered government service in education, survived the Revolt of 1857, helped to translate the Indian Penal Code into Urdu, and rose to be a deputy collector, which is why he is still called "Deputy" Nazir Ahmad. Later he served the state of Hyderabad, and after retiring to Delhi he made a famous Urdu translation of the Qur'an. He died in Delhi in 1912.

He began writing stories for his own children. *Mirat-ul-Uroos* ("The Bride's Mirror", 1869), the tale of two sisters, the foolish Akbari and the sensible Asghari, won a government prize and became one of the most widely read books in Urdu; it is often called the first Urdu novel. *Banat-un-Nash* followed, then *Taubat-un-Nasuh* ("The Repentance of Nasuh", 1874), *Ibn-ul-Waqt* (1888) and other novels on family life, religion and the new world of English rule.

In *Banat-un-Nash* Asghari, now a respected married woman, runs a school for the daughters of good families in her neighbourhood. Into it comes Husn Ara, the spoilt and bad-tempered daughter of a rich and indulgent household. Through talk, example and patience rather than punishment, Asghari and her sister-in-law Mahmuda cure her of her pride, laziness, bad temper and superstition. Along the way the girls learn arithmetic, the pull of the earth, the shape and size of the globe, the geography of Arabia, astronomy and the cause of eclipses, and they hear stories: the tale of the cruel nobleman Masih-ul-Mulk, a long tale of women's superstitions, the life of a poor but contented family, and the good life of an English family who come to live next door to one of the girls. The book ends with Husn Ara's farewell to the school before her marriage, and with Asghari's gift to her of a book she has written about her pupils, *Banat-un-Nash*.

As Nazir Ahmad says in his preface, *Mirat-ul-Uroos* was meant to teach good conduct and household management, and this second part teaches those too, but above all useful knowledge. It is one of the earliest books in Urdu written to give girls a modern education, and it shows how a Muslim reformer of the 1870s tried to join religious faith, household skill and the new sciences.

Why it is studied: *Banat-un-Nash* is read in courses on the Urdu novel, on women's education and reform in nineteenth-century India, on the history of science writing in Urdu, and on Muslim responses to colonial rule. Its Delhi speech, especially the speech of women, is lively and exact, and it is a rich source for the daily life, food, dress, customs and beliefs of a Delhi household after 1857.

Names in this translation: Nazir Ahmad, Asghari (Asghari Khanam), Mahmuda, Husn Ara (Husna), Sultana Begam, Jamal Ara, Masih-ul-Mulk, Delhi, Jhajjar. Key terms are kept in italics with a short gloss on first use, and explained in the glossary at the end.

How to cite: Nazir Ahmad, *Banat-un-Nash* (Delhi reprint, 1950; archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.498588), with English translation, urduintranslation.com, 2026, https://www.urduintranslation.com/works/banat-un-nash.