Urdu is a hybrid language that is based on the spoken languages of Northern India with a generous overlay of Arabic and Persian words. ‘Urdu’ is a Turkish word, which means a camp. When Muslims from ...

That 300,000 people celebrated Urdu verse during a three-day festival was testament to the peculiar reality of the language in India. The inaugural day of the Urdu poetry festival Jashn-e-Rekhta in ...

in the late 1960’s. Izhar-ul-Haq was deeply moved by Aftab Ahmad Shah’s wondrous intelligence, his mercurial temperament, and his imperviousness to worldliness. He proceeds to review the latter’s ...

LOVE and beloved are one of the central themes in classical Urdu poetry. Classical poets express their extreme love for the sweetheart. But there is a remote yet distinct possibility that a poet may ...