Khan refers to Jan Sahib as one of the two leading writers of Rekhti, but says that his oeuvre expanded Rekhti from “women’s domestic speech describing their habitats and sentiments” by his inclusion of many other aspects of life. The nawab’s support to a famous Rekhti poet also meant that the “dying art was preserved through the nascent print culture and the Rampur library.” Many other writers and performers from post-1857 Lucknow and Delhi received a similar welcome, including such eminent figures as poets Daagh Dehlvi and Ameer Minai, daastaangoh Hakim Asghar Ali and others who feature in The Incomparable Festival. Jan Sahib (1818-86) fled Lucknow after the devastation of the 1857 ghadar and settled in Rampur, whose nawab became his patron. Khan refers to Jan Sahib’s poem as a “quintessential text” that evokes the “literary centrality” of princely Rampur and has great historical significance because it is written in Rekhti, a “genre of poetry in Urdu from late mediaeval northern India” that was written by men, in the language of women.Ī translation into English of a spectacular 19th century poem provides important insights in South Asia’s cultural and literary history The English translation begins with an informed introduction by Dr Razak Khan, author of Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions and Belonging in Princely Rampur. This annual festival was initiated in 1866 by Rampur’s Nawab Kalb-i-Ali Khan to promote trade, literature and the arts and was immortalised in Jan Sahib’s long mussaddas which he wrote circa 1867-68 with the title ‘Mussaddas Thaniyaat-i-Jashn-i-Benazir’. Translated from Urdu into English by Shad Naveed and edited by Razak Khan, this spectacular 19th century poem provides important insights into South Asia’s cultural and literary history, through its celebration of Rampur’s fabled six-day festival called Jashn-i-Benazir. Its rich heritage emerges with great clarity in The Incomparable Festival by Mir Ali Yar, who wrote under the takhallus ‘Jan Sahib’. The princely state of Rampur was known as a centre of literature, music and the arts in undivided India. Edited and with an Introduction by Razak Khan
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