Mirza Farhatullah Baig
1883–1947
Biography
Mirza Farhatullah Baig (1883–1947) was an Urdu humorist, essayist and prose writer. He was born in Delhi, and the city he grew up in became the subject of much of his best writing. After taking a BA he went to Hyderabad in the Deccan, where he held a series of judicial posts and rose to become an assistant to the home secretary of the state before he retired. He is described as a senior judge in Hyderabad State, and his years there are part of the background to his writing.
Humour was his strongest gift. He also wrote on history, research and biography, but his essays are best remembered for their wit and their portraits of people. Critics praised his clear, pleasant style, with its Delhi idiom and its well-chosen proverbs. His best-known pieces include a sketch of the novelist Deputy Nazir Ahmad, an account of a memorable Delhi poetry gathering (دہلی کا یادگار مشاعرہ), and a piece on the Phoolwalon ki Sair, the Delhi flower-sellers' festival. His essays were later gathered into several volumes.
Dilli Ki Akhri Shama is his book on this site. Its title, The Last Candle of Delhi, points to the subject he returned to again and again: the old city and the manners that were passing away. Readers who come for the humour and for the picture of old Delhi should read the book itself first, then his essays, to see how his gentle irony and his affection for the old city work together.
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Books
دہلی کی آخری شمع
by مرزا فرحت اللہ بیگ
Mirza Farhatullah Baig's Delhi's Last Candle (1928) is an imagined report of a poets' gathering held in Delhi in 1845, in the last years before the Mughal city was broken up. It introduces the poets one by one, among them Zauq, Ghalib and Momin, and is read for its picture of…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.