How the manuscripts of Ghalib’s early divans were found, 50 years after his death

Mehr Afshan Farooqi

Dec 31, 2020

Poetry in essence is ink-blood

That the scribe draws with a perfumed reed;

What worries can the poet have, if these unique verses,

Become memorable to those for whom they were written?

Asadullah Khan Ghalib

In my opinion Ghalib had the right to remove and discard his own poetry. He retained what he liked and took out what he did not like. But we do not have that right. Until this manuscript was found, the situation was different…How Ghalib must have suffered in cutting off these pieces of his heart. He must have endured so much heartache and misery.

Mufti Anvarul Haq, Editor, Divān-e Ghalib Jadīd al ma’ruf ba Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah

Ghalib’s readers would have been deprived of almost half his poetry if the handwritten copies of his earlier Divāns had not been found. The first among these copies referred to as nuskhah in Urdu was discovered in 1917 in Bhopal some fifty years after Ghalib’s death. It is known as the Nuskhah-e Bhopal (Bhopal Manuscript) or Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah (Hamidiyyah Manuscript). The Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah, technically, is a published version of the manuscript. The provenance of this manuscript is convoluted. There are intricate twists around its journey from Delhi, to Bhopal, in central India. But more important is the debate surrounding the text itself, the corrections, notations in the margins, additions of entire ghazals, plus an assortment of materials in the first few pages preceding the main text, and also at the end of the manuscript. Quite a lot has been written about these issues by scholars who specialize in Ghalib studies. Yet, the discourse around the manuscript is not conclusive or complete because many questions are unresolved. The matter was complicated by the disappearance of the manuscript in the mayhem of Partition or sometime before the sundering of British India. A flawed edition had been published in 1921¹. Subsequent editions have been revisions of the first one, supplemented with notes taken by the scholars who had seen the nuskhah before it disappeared from the public domain.

The manuscript (completed in 1821) was in the personal library of Faujdar Muhammad Khan, youngest maternal uncle of Navab Sikandar Jahan Begum, ruler of the state of Bhopal. Begum Sikandar’s 21-year reign (1847-68) was the golden period of Bhopal’s history. She presided over a dynamic, reform-oriented regime. Resisting pressure from her advisors, Sikandar Begum had the foresight, to side with the British in the 1857 Revolt³. Hearing of Ghalib’s struggles after 1857, she had invited him to take up residence at Bhopal. But Ghalib, despite his financial difficulties, was always reluctant to leave Delhi. Although Ghalib did not accept the offer to visit Bhopal, it seems that the Begum sent him monetary gifts through her uncle Faujdar Muhammad Khan. Salim Hamid Rizvi makes a plausible, though unsubstantiated claim that Faujdar Mohammad Khan acquired the manuscript from Ghalib on one of these visits⁴:

She [Navab Begum Sikandar] occasionally sent her uncle Miyan Faujdar Muhammad Khan to Ghalib with monetary gifts. The result of these comings and goings was that Ghalib presented Faujdar Muhammad Khan a nuskhah of his original divān that had been corrected in his own hand. This nuskhah became the jewel of Faujdar Khan’s library.

Faujdar Muhammad Khan (d.1865) was a learned nobleman; a polymath who specialized in grammar, prosody, logic, Islamic law, mathematics, unani medicine and geography. He was a scholar of literature who also possessed a deep knowledge of music He was an avid collector of books⁵. It is not surprising that a nuskhah of Ghalib’s divān should be in his library. We also know that Faujdar Muhammad Khan was an admirer of Ghalib’s work. Apparently, Ghalib and Faujdar Muhammad Khan wrote to one another, but no letters have survived to prove this claim. Faujdar Muhammad Khan’s son NavabYār Muhammad Khan Shaukat (1823? -1913) inherited his father’s love of literature. He showed an interest in writing poetry even as a child. As soon as he was old enough, Faujdar Muhammad Khan took him to Delhi and requested Ghalib to accept him as a pupil. Ghalib was getting on in years. He accepted the special pupil (shagird) with the suggestion that he show his compositions to Maulana Muhammad Abbas Raf‘at⁶. However, according to Abdul Qavi Dasnavi, Navab Yār Muhammad Khan did not accompany his father but his aunt Navab Begum Sikandar Jahan when she travelled to Delhi to meet Lord Lake in 1866. He went to meet Ghalib who accepted him as a pupil and suggested the pen name Shaukat⁷. Although the Navab did not benefit directly from Ghalib’s mentoring, he did mature as a poet with a published divan.⁸

The story of the manuscript’s acquisition by Faujdar Muhammad Khan is interesting for historical and anecdotal purposes but not quite as important for its authentication. The Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah (Divan of 1821) bears Faujdar Muhammad Khan’s octagonal seal on several pages; at the beginning, end, and randomly throughout the manuscript. The larger of the two seals is more ornate, encircled with a traditional, hand painted design in indigo, green, red and gold. It bears the date 1261 hijri (approximately 1845). The smaller seal has an earlier date: 1248 hijri (approximately 1832). Fortunately, the manuscript has an unblemished colophon giving the date of its completion, hijri 1237, which corresponds to November 1821. The completion date 1821,indicates that the manuscript was calligraphed eleven years prior to the accession date (1832) on Faujdar Muhammad Khan’s seal. The difference in these dates has produced speculations as to where the manuscript was before it reached Faujdar Muhammad Khan’s library. Was it with Ghalib or with someone else? I will go into these details later in this chapter.

Bhopal was the site of another, earlier, and in some respects more important manuscript of Ghalib’s Divān that was discovered as late as 1969, the year his death centenary was commemorated with many literary conferences and publications. This manuscript, presumably in Ghalib’s hand, was completed in 1816 when Ghalib was nineteen! Since both manuscripts were found in Bhopal, there has been confusion in naming the codices. This coincidence is almost as muddling as the dilemma of how to refer to the poems that they contain. Both manuscripts had disappeared; although, as we shall see, the Faujdar Mohammad Khan manuscript or the Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah has recently resurfaced⁹. The 1816 Divan has surfaced as well¹⁰.

The Nuskhah-e Hammidiyyah is named after Navab Hamīdullah Khan who was the current ruler-Secretary of Bhopal, when the manuscript was found at the Hamidiyyah Library11. Navab Hamīudullah Khan played an imperative role in getting it published. Eminent scholar, Abdur Rahman Bijnori, was actively in the process of compiling an annotated edition of Ghalib’s Divān for the Anjuman Taraqqi-e Urdu. He had been collecting numerous editions of Ghalib’s Divān to ensure textual accuracy. He was looking out for rare editions, even manuscripts. Bijnori was alerted that an early Divan of Ghalib had been found at the Hamidiyyah Library in Bhopal. The credit of finding the manuscript goes to Maulana Abdus Salam Nadvi12. The announcement was made in the journal Ma‘arif published from Azamgarh in 1918. The discovery of Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah, it gave an entirely new perspective to Bijnori’s ongoing work. He was invited by Maulana Nadvito undertake the challenging responsibility of editing the newly discovered manuscript. Bijnori had written a stimulating book length essay titled Mahāsin-e Kalām-e Ghalib (Merits of Ghalib’s poetry), presumably meant to accompany his forthcoming edition of Ghalib’s Divan13. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in the flu epidemic that swept India in 191814. He was only 31 years of age. His work had only begun.

Bijnori’sbook-length essay on the merits of Ghalib’s poetry has become a classic for at least two important reasons. It begins with a resounding rhetorical claim, which in one bold stroke, puts Ghalib on the same plane as the holy Vedas. He wrote:

India has two divine gospels, the holy Vedas and the Divān-e Ghalib. From beginning to end there are barely 100 pages, but what else is there [in this world] that is not present here…Poetry is the revelation of existence; just as life is not confined in its appearance, so is poetry unlimited in its expression15.

Bijnori peppered his essay with references to Goethe, Kant, Nietzshe, Hegel, Spencer, Rimbaud, Fitzgerald and a host of European writers. He started a new kind of comparative trend in Urdu critical writing. But what is even more important is Bijnori’s demand that Ghalib’s greatness be acknowledged beyond the limits of the Urdu reading world. Bijnori went on to compare Goethe with Ghalib’s poetic genius. He claimed that Ghalib’s ideas on existence, the endlessness of imagination, reality, and nature resonate in Goethe’s poetry.16

1. Mufti Anvarul Haq, Divān-e Ghalib Jadīd al ma’rufba Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah, Agra, 1921. Hamid Ahmad Khan’s 1969 edition, Divan-e Ghalib Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah, Majlis-e Taraqqi-e Adab, Lahore, 1969 is generally regarded as a good scholarly edition.
2. The Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah has recently resurfaced in the library of a private collector. I have the good fortune of having a digital copy. For clarity’s sake I will refer to the different manuscript-divans of Ghalib in conformity with their colophon. Thus Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah is referred to as the Divan of 1821.
3. Probably the most important act performed by her was to have Delhi’s famous Jama Masjid reopened after the British had closed it during the Revolt of 1857. The British claimed to have closed the Jama Masjid, built by Emperor Shahjahan, during the Rebellion because they felt it provided a sanctuary for Muslim resistance. In fact the British were using the famous mosque as a stable. Sikandar Begum persuaded the British to reopen the Jama Masjid, washed the courtyard with her own hands and was the first person to pray in it since its closure. Sikandar is described by most historians as possessing Amazonian power. She had a very masculine physique. Her steely gaze is said to have been enough to make opponents tremble.
4. Urdu AdabkiTaraqqi Mein Bhopal ka Hissah (The Role of Bhopal in the Development of Urdu), Bhopal, Alavi Press, 1965, p 128.
5. Muhammad Yusuf Qaisar attests Faujdar Khan’s keen interest in book collection in his essay, Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyaaur Faujdar Mohammad Khan, Furogh-e Urdu, Ghalib Nambar, edited Nadim Sitapuri. Cited from Abdul QaviDesnavi, Bhopal aur Ghalib (Ghalib and Bhopal), Bhopal: Bhopal Press, 1969, p. 16.
6. This reported at length in the Navab’s journal, Shahenshahnamah, p. 15. Cited from Urdu Adab k iTaraqqi Mein Bhopal ka Hissah, Salim Hamid Rizvi, p. 205.
7. Dasnavi, Bhopal aur Ghalib, p.35.
8. NavabYār Muhammad Khan Shuakat’s poetry collection, Divān-e Shaukat was published from Kanpur in 1883.
9. Since my writing of this chapter, the second manuscript, Divan of 1816 has also resurfaced.
10. I discuss the details of the 1816 Divan in the next chapter.
11. Hamidiyyah Library is now known as Maulana Azad Central Library.
12. See Abu Muhammad Sahar’s essay, “Divan-e Ghalib, Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah, chandinkishafat,” (Divan-e Ghalib, Nuskhah-e Hamidiyyah, some revelations) in Hamari Zaban: Aligarh, July 22, 1969, p.3.
13. This essay was not included in the first published 1921 edition of the Nuskhah-e Hamidiyya. It was included in a subsequent, enlarged edition. It wasalso published in the journal Urdu in 1922 from Hyderabad, Deccan by the AnjumanTaraqqi Urdu.
14. I began publishing my essays on Ghalib’s early poetry I was contacted by many Ghalib aficionados who
offered me encouragement and advice. I was both surprised and pleased to hear from Dr Bijnori’s grandson Mr. Haroon Siddiqi. Siddiqi sahib sent me a photograph of Bijnori sahib and copies of two moving letters of condolence that Mohammad Iqbal had written on Dr Bijnori’s passing.

15. Bijnori, Mahāsin-e Kalām-e Ghalib, Special Centenary Edition, Fakhri Printing Press Karachi, 1969, p 6. The Abdur Rahman Bijnori Trust of Islamabad, Pakistan has recently published the collected writings of Bijnori.

Excerpted from Ghalib: A Wilderness at My Doorstep, A Critical Biography by Mehr Afshan Farooqi (Penguin Random House), pp. 416, Rs 799

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How the manuscripts of Ghalib’s early divans were found, 50 years after his death

Excerpted from Ghalib: A Wilderness at My Doorstep, A Critical Biography by Mehr Afshan Farooqi (Penguin Random House), pp. 416, Rs 799

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