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BABAR ALI ANEES
(1804-1874) |
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Anees was born at Faizabad (U.P.) in 1804, but he spent the best part of his life at Lucknow, where his parents had migrated in their old age. Poetry came to him as ancestral heritage, for his forbears, going back to his great grandfather, were eminent poets and men of letters. Anees was the grandson of Mir Husan who is remembered for his immortal masnavi, "Sehir-ul-Bayaan." Anees's father, Mir Khaliq who was a famous poet and litterateur, took personal interest in the education and upbringing of his son, and entrusted him to the care of reputed contemporary teachers, Mir Najaf Ali Faizabadi and Maulvi Hyder Ali Lucknavi. In addition, Anees's mother who was an educated and pious lady, played a significant role in shaping the personality of the boy poet. But above all, it was the boy's own instinctive urge for learning and literature that made him an accomplished poet, proficient in Arabic, Persian and Islamic scriptures, and well-versed in logic, philosophy and prosody.
Anees had started writing poetry quite early in his life right at Faizabad, through he perfected his art in Lucknow under the supervision of Nasikh. In keeping with the popular trend, he first tried his hand at the ghazal, but failing to make much headway in this direction, he changed over, under the advice of his father, to the writing of marsias, in which domain he soon established a high reputation, equalled (sometimes) by his poetic compare, Salamat Ali Dabir. Anees broadened the scope of this genre by including in its body, in addition to the customary lamentation and mourning, realistic scenes of the battlefield, graphic delineations of the hero's face and figure, lively portrayals of the emotional states of the combatants, accurate descriptions of the lanscape, and occasional interludes of moral edification.
The excerpt from one of his marsias included in this book is specially notable for its exact and evocative description, for it enables notable for its exact and evocative description, for it enables us not only to see, but also to smell and feel the heat of the day and its impact on the several worlds of men, birds and beasts. It is a piece of fine artistry, reminiscent of Tennyson, the poet of the "Lotos-Eaters" and "The Lady of Shalott." Anees was the master of simple, natural utterance, with a superb command on the language, which was always adequate to express a large variety of moods, scenes, characters and situations. He is specially notable for presenting the same scene or situation, over and over again, in different words or phrases, without letting it sound monotonous. Shibli Numani, a famous Urdu scholar and critic, has emphasized the appropriateness and naturalness of Anees's musical lines, where every word is harmoniously pattern, rich in meaning and music. It may also be mentioned that Aness was not only a writer, but also (like Dabir) a singer of marsias, gifted as he was with a highely mellifluous voice.
Besides being a master of the marsia, Anees was also a specialist of the rubai, the shortest complete poem in Urdu, contaning only four lines, rhyming aaba.
Anees died in 1874 at the age of 70.
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