Muhammad Husain Azad

Azad was born in Delhi to a Persian immigrant family. His mother died when he was four years old. His father, Muhammad Baqir was educated at the Delhi College. In early 1837, Azad bought a press and launched the Delhi Urdu Akhbaar (Delhi Urdu Newspaper).

Azad married Aghai Begum, the daughter of another Persian immigrant family. Following his father's death and a period of turmoil in Delhi, Azad migrated to Lahore in 1861.

Azad started teaching at the newly founded (1864) Government College, Lahore, and later at Oriental College, Lahore. In Lahore he came in contact with G. W. Leitner, who was the principal and founder of Anjuman-e-Punjab. In 1866 Azad became a regularly paid lecturer on behalf of the Anjuman and a year later became its secretary. In 1887 he established the Azad Library. Azad died in Lahore on 22 January 1910 at the age of 79.

Along with Altaf Hussain Hali, Azad led a movement for 'natural poetry', a movement to reform classical Urdu poetry. He declared the aim of poetry to be to “as we express it arouse in the listeners’ heart the same effect, the same emotion, the same fervor, as would be created by seeing the thing itself, rejecting the aesthetics of classical Urdu poetry, which, according to him, was artificial and enwrapped in a 'game of words' that did not produce emotion.[1] He died in Lahore in 1910.[2]

• Qisas ul-hind ("Stories of India") - 1869
• Nairang-e Khiyāl ("The Wonder-World of Thought") - 1880
• Aab-e-Hayat ("Water of Life/Elixir") - 1880
• Sair-i Iran - 1886
• Sukhandān-e fārs ("On Iranian Poets") - completed in 1887 and published in 1907.
• Darbār-e akbarī ("The Court of Akbar") - 1898

• Table of Contents -- Digital South Asia Library at dsal.uchicago.edu Aab-eHayat link to 1907 edition printed Naval Kishore Press, Lahore.
• at dsal.uchicago.edu Aab-eHayat link to English Translation, Translated and edited by Frances W. Pritchett, in association with Shamsur Rahman Faruqi