About This Edition and Introduction

About This Edition

This is a complete Urdu text and English translation of *Guzishta Lucknow* ("Lucknow of the Past"), whose full title is *Hindustan men Mashriqi Tamaddun ka Akhiri Namuna, ya'ni Guzishta Lucknow* ("The Last Example of Eastern Civilisation in India, that is, Lucknow of the Past"), by Abdul Halim Sharar (1860–1926).

Source of the Urdu text: an undated reprint of the book, freely available on the Internet Archive from the Digital Library of India (archive.org/details/dli.ernet.450196; the catalogue names the publisher as Sultan Haseen and Sons, Karachi). The text was transcribed page by page from the scan for this edition.

The last leaf of that copy is lost: the scan breaks off in the middle of the final section, on pottery. The last four pages of Sharar's text are therefore taken from the Maktaba Jamia edition (New Delhi, 1971, edited by Rashid Hasan Khan), pages 437–440, also on the Internet Archive (archive.org/details/nMGq_guzashta-lucknow-by-maulana-abdul-halim-sharar-ed.-rashid-hasan-khan-new-delhi-1). A second scan of the same edition was used to confirm that the book ends there. Only Sharar's own words are taken from this edition; its editor's introduction and notes are not used.

Gaps and damage: one leaf (pages 203–204 of the printing, in the section on food) is missing from the scanned copy; the gap is marked in the text and in a translator's note, and nothing has been supplied in its place. Some pages carry ink blots or are cut at the margin; where a word could still be read from its fragments or was certain from the context it is given, and where it could not it is marked [illegible]. On one page in the section on wedding customs the printing itself has rows of dots, which are kept as they stand.

Divisions: Sharar's text is a series of numbered sections, (1) to (54), and each section is a chapter here. Both printings number the section on conveyances and the section on pottery (53); the second is printed here as (54) so that no number is repeated. One sentence on Maulana Habib-ur-Rahman Khan Sherwani, set in smaller type in the printing as a later addition, is kept in its place. Running heads and page numbers are left out. Dates are given as Sharar gives them, with his own Christian-era equivalents; some of these do not agree with the standard chronology and have not been corrected.

Quotations and notes: Sharar quotes Persian and Arabic verse and prose, and occasionally the Qur'an. All of these are translated into English, and the originals stand in the facing Urdu column or in the notes at the end of the chapter. Where the printing has an evident slip, or a reading is uncertain, the text is given as printed and a translator's note [TN: ...] says so. Where Sharar reports something at second hand, or makes a claim that is open to question (for example on the origin of a custom, the authority of a saying, or the practice of another community), it is translated exactly and a translator's note points this out; his opinions are his own.

Copyright: Sharar died in 1926, and the work was written and first published before his death, so it is in the public domain in Pakistan, India and the United States. The English translation is new.

Introduction

Abdul Halim Sharar was born in Lucknow in 1860. As a boy he lived for some years at Matiya Burj, outside Calcutta, where the last king of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, kept a miniature court in exile after 1856, and where his father was in the king's service. Back in Lucknow he became a journalist, and in 1887 he founded his own journal, *Dilgudaz*, which he edited for most of his life. He was one of the most prolific Urdu writers of his time, best known for his historical novels, such as *Firdaus-e-Barin*, and for his essays and histories. He died in Lucknow in 1926.

*Guzishta Lucknow* first appeared as a long series of articles in *Dilgudaz* and was afterwards collected as a book. It is Sharar's portrait of the city in which, as he argues in his first sentence, the old culture of Muslim India made its last stand: the capital of the Nawabs and then the Kings of Awadh, from its rise in the eighteenth century to the annexation of 1856 and the revolt of 1857, and the way of life that outlived the court.

The book falls into two parts. The first nine sections are a short history of the dynasty, from Saadat Khan Burhan-ul-Mulk and the court at Faizabad to Wajid Ali Shah's exile at Matiya Burj. The rest describe the city's culture one subject at a time: Urdu poetry and prose and the speech of every class; learning, medicine, Persian and calligraphy; the martial arts, animal fights, pigeons and kites; music, dance, the *bhand*s, *soz-khwani* and the bazaar bands; food, sweets and the cooling of water; dress, caps, turbans, shawls, shoes and jewellery; houses and furniture; manners, greetings, conversation and wit; the ceremonies of birth, marriage and death; religious gatherings; the *huqqa*, *pan* and its vessels; conveyances; and finally the potters and their clay figures.

Why it is studied: *Guzishta Lucknow* is the classic account, from the inside, of the culture of nineteenth-century Lucknow, and it is a basic source for historians of Awadh, of Urdu literature and language, of Hindustani music and dance, of food and dress, and of everyday life in North India. Sharar writes as a member of that society and as one who had seen its last days at Matiya Burj; he is affectionate but not uncritical, and he constantly compares Lucknow with Delhi, Hyderabad, Europe and the ancient world. Readers should remember that he is a memoirist and essayist rather than a critical historian: many of his stories are hearsay, his dates are sometimes wrong, and his remarks on other communities and on sectarian matters reflect his own time and views. These are translated as he wrote them, with notes where needed.

Names in this translation: Lucknow, Delhi, Faizabad, Awadh, Calcutta; Saadat Khan Burhan-ul-Mulk, Safdar Jang, Shuja-ud-Daula, Asaf-ud-Daula, Saadat Ali Khan, Ghazi-ud-Din Haidar, Nasir-ud-Din Haidar, Muhammad Ali Shah, Amjad Ali Shah, Wajid Ali Shah, Birjis Qadr; Mir Anis, Mirza Dabir, Nasikh, Atish, Insha. Dates of the Hijri era, which Sharar calls the "Muhammadan era", are kept as he gives them. Cultural and technical terms are kept in italics with a short gloss on first use, and explained in the glossary at the end. Translator's notes are marked [TN: ...].

How to cite: Abdul Halim Sharar, *Guzishta Lucknow*, Urdu text from the Digital Library of India copy (dli.ernet.450196), completed from the Maktaba Jamia edition (1971), with English translation, urduintranslation.com, 2026, https://www.urduintranslation.com/works/guzishta-lucknow.