About This Edition and Introduction

About This Edition

This is the complete Urdu text, with an English translation, of the first part of *Yadgar-e-Ghalib* ("A Memorial of Ghalib") by Khwaja Altaf Husain Hali (1837–1914): Hali's preface and his account of the life, character, habits and opinions of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869).

Source of the Urdu text: the first edition, printed at Muhammad Rahmatullah Ra'd's Nami Press, Kanpur, in 1897, freely available on the Internet Archive (archive.org/details/YadgarGhalib). The title page reads "*Yadgar-e-Ghalib*, that is, the circumstances of the life of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib of Delhi, and a selection of every kind of his Urdu and Persian verse and prose, with separate remarks on each kind... compiled by the humble Altaf Husain Hali of Panipat, 1897." The text was transcribed page by page from the scan for this edition, covering pages 1 to 105 of the printing.

What this edition contains: Hali divided his book into two parts. The first part, given here complete, is the biography: Ghalib's family and education, his journey to Calcutta, his imprisonment, his years at the Mughal court, the Revolt of 1857, the *Qati'-e Burhan* controversy, and then a long portrait of his character, wit, faith, friendships, home life, last years and death, ending with an account of his pupils and two close friends. The second part of Hali's book (pages 106 to 330 of the printing) is a critical anthology of Ghalib's Urdu and Persian verse and prose, with Hali's commentary. It is not included in this edition and may be published separately.

Divisions: Hali's first part runs on without chapter numbers, broken by many short headings in the margin. Here it is divided into sixteen chapters at natural breaks, and each chapter begins with Hali's own heading at that point; the English chapter titles are editorial. Hali's marginal headings are kept as headings inside the chapters. Many of them are faint in the scan; where a marginal heading could not be read with confidence, the wording of Hali's own table of contents for that page has been used, and where no heading could be read at all, none has been added. Hali's frequent marginal note *latifa* ("anecdote") is kept as a heading wherever it occurs. Page numbers and running heads are left out.

Quotations and notes: Hali quotes a great deal of Persian, in verse and prose, together with some Arabic. All of it is translated into English, and the originals stand in the facing Urdu column. Hali's own footnotes are collected at the end of each chapter, marked "Hali's note"; a few words that the printing gives as glosses above a line of verse are given there too. Some passages, especially Persian verse in very small or calligraphic type, could only be read with some doubt; these are given as they appear in the print and a translator's note [TN: ...] says so. One footnote, in very small type, is largely illegible and is marked [illegible]. Nothing has been supplied to fill a gap.

Copyright: Hali died in 1914, and *Yadgar-e-Ghalib* was first published in 1897, so the work is in the public domain in Pakistan, India and the United States. The English translation is new.

Introduction

Altaf Husain Hali was born in Panipat in 1837. As a young man he went to Delhi, where he came to know Ghalib and took advice from him on his verse; he was also close to the poet and critic Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta, in whose household at Jahangirabad he lived for some years. After 1857 he worked in Lahore, revising translations of English books for the Punjab Government Book Depot, and later taught at the Anglo-Arabic School in Delhi. He became one of the great reformers of Urdu literature and a close ally of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. His long poem *Musaddas-e-Hali* (1879), his critical study *Muqaddama-e-Shi'r-o-Sha'iri* (1893) and his three biographies, *Hayat-e-Sa'di*, *Yadgar-e-Ghalib* and *Hayat-e-Javed* (on Sir Sayyid), are landmarks of modern Urdu. He died in Panipat in 1914.

*Yadgar-e-Ghalib* appeared in 1897, twenty-eight years after Ghalib's death. It was the first full biography of Ghalib and remains the foundation of every later one. Hali knew Ghalib in his last years, heard many of the stories from Ghalib himself or from his friends, and drew on Ghalib's Persian and Urdu letters and books, on the memories of Delhi friends who sent him material, and on manuscript drafts lent by Ghalib's pupil Bihari Lal Mushtaq. He says plainly that the events of the life matter less to him than the poet's gift, which showed itself, as he puts it, in verse and prose, in wit and repartee, in love and freedom of spirit, and in mysticism and devotion to the Prophet's family.

Why it is studied: the book is the main early source for Ghalib's life, and almost every well-known story about him, from his quarrel with the people of Calcutta and his imprisonment for gambling to his jokes about wine, fasting and mangoes, comes from it. It is also a portrait of literary Delhi in the last years of the Mughal court and after 1857. Hali writes with love and admiration, but he does not hide Ghalib's drinking, his debts, his carelessness about religious duties or his quarrels; and in one chapter he tells, against himself, how he once lectured the old poet about prayer and was answered with a rebuke in verse. Readers should remember that Hali is a memoirist and admirer rather than a critical historian: some dates are wrong (he makes Ghalib "somewhat under forty" when he reached Calcutta, when he was about thirty-one), many anecdotes are reported at second hand, and his remarks on religious controversies reflect his own views. These are translated as he wrote them, with notes where needed.

Names in this translation: Ghalib is called "the Mirza", as Hali calls him. Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Calcutta, Rampur; Bahadur Shah (Abu Zafar Siraj-ud-Din), Nawab Ziya-ud-Din Ahmad Khan (Nayyar, Rakhshan), Nawab Mustafa Khan (Shefta, Hasrati), Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, Maulana Fazl-e Haq, Mir Mahdi Majruh, Hargopal Tafta, Zauq, Momin, Azurda, Sahba'i. Hijri dates are kept as Hali gives them, with Christian-era equivalents added in notes where useful. Cultural and literary 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: Altaf Husain Hali, *Yadgar-e-Ghalib*, Part One, Urdu text from the first edition (Nami Press, Kanpur, 1897; archive.org/details/YadgarGhalib), with English translation, urduintranslation.com, 2026, https://www.urduintranslation.com/works/yadgar-e-ghalib.