Dehli ki Akhri Shama (The Last Candle of Delhi): A Royal Mushaira of 1845
دہلی کی آخری شمع
Mirza Farhatullah Baig
Delhi, July 1845. Maulvi Karimuddin, a penniless printer from Panipat, wants to hold a mushaira to save his press, and with the help of a dying young nawab and the Emperor's own son he ends up with the greatest poetry night of the last Mughal age. Mirza Farhatullah Baig (1883-1947) imagines that night candle by candle: Bahadur Shah Zafar's ghazal read out in the notes of raga Sorath, Ghalib slapping his thighs at a good couplet, Momin combing his curls as he recites, Zauq quietly seating the princes, the boy Dagh, the naked mystic Tishna who blows out the candle and walks into the dark saying "nothing at all", the comic Mir Sahib and his endless line, until Zauq reaches the line about the muezzin just as the call to prayer sounds from the mosque next door. Baig drew the faces, dress and manners of dozens of poets from old men who remembered them; within twelve years most were dead and the Red Fort sacked, and the book is both a comedy and an elegy. Complete Urdu text (Urdu Wikisource, checked against the 1938 printing, archive.org dli.ernet.504768) with a facing English translation, introduction, the author's 25 notes and a glossary. Cite as: Mirza Farhatullah Baig, Dehli ki Akhri Shama, tr. urduintranslation.com (2026), https://www.urduintranslation.com/works/dehli-ki-akhri-shama. The first two chapters are free to read.
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