Nusrati

File:Nusrati.jpg

Nusrati writing the Gulshan-i ʿishq, from a manuscript of 1743

Muḥammad Nuṣrat (died 1674), called Nuṣratī ('victorious'), was a Deccani Urdu poet.

Life

Nuṣratī was born in the Carnatic region into an elite Muslim family of Brahmin origin. He lived as a Sufi dervish before moving to Bijapur. There he was made a mansabdar under Sultan ʿAlī II (r. 1656–1672) of the ʿĀdil-Shāhī dynasty. For his poem ʿAlī-nāma (c. 1665), he was named poet laureate (malik al-shuʿarāʾ). He died at an old age in 1674 or 1683.

Works

Nuṣratī wrote in the Deccani variety of Urdu and Persian. His poetry uses archaic language and a complex style. He was a prominent practitioner of the qaṣīda, ghazal and especially mathnawī forms. One of his earliest works, Miʿrāj-nāma, was written for Sultan Muḥammad ʿĀdil Shāh (r. 1627–1656).

His most original work is the ʿAlī-nāma, an epic celebration of ʿAlī II's wars against the Mughals and Marathas. It is the earliest panegyric of a ruler in Deccani. Nuṣratī himself claimed to have invented a new poetic form with this work, which is "the only thing of its kind in Urdu". It is patterned on the Persian Shāh-nāma. Grahame Bailey calls it the greatest poem ever written at Bijapur.

Nuṣratī's final poem, written in a similar vein, is Taʾrīkh-i Sikandarī (also called the Taʾrīkh-i Bahlol Khani), a celebration of Bahlol Khan's victory over Shivaji at the battle of Umrani in 1672. It was written for ʿAlī II's successor, Sikandar. Unlike the ʿAlīnāma, written at the height of Bijapur's power, it is "largely in a minor key". Other works of Nuṣratī's include Gulshan-i ʿishq (1658), a collection of odes and the lyric collection Guldasta-yi ʿishq. Gulshan-i ʿishq is a highly conventional romance.