ELĀHĪ HAMADĀNĪ, SAYYED MĪR ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN MAḤMŪD

 

ELĀHĪ HAMADĀNĪ, SAYYED MĪR ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN MAḤMŪD b. Ḥojjat-Allāh Asadābādī, a poet of the 17th century from Asadābād, a village near Hamadān. He spent a few years in Shiraz studying and then moved to Isfahan, where he stayed for about two years, working at a coffeehouse and associating with poets like Ḥakīm Šefāʾī (Naṣrābādī, pp. 255-56; Awḥadī, apud Golčīn-e Maʿānī, Kārvān I, pp. 94-95; Belgrāmī, p. 85). In 1018/1609 he went to Khorasan and from there, via Kabul and Qandahār to Agra, India, where he arrived in 1021/1612. On his way to Agra he spent some time in Qandahār as a poet at the court of the Mughal governor Mīrzā Ḡāzī Weqārī. In India he lived under the patronage of Ẓafar Khan Aḥsan and accompanied him to Kabul and Kashmir during the latter’s viceroyalty at these places. He settled in Kashmir in 1041-42/1632-34 (Sufi, p. 357) and died there in 1063/1653. He was buried in the western side of the courtyard of the tomb of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Ganjbaḵš (Dīdamaīi, fols. 162-63). According to Rāšedī (p. 125), Elāhī built a garden (Bāḡ-e Elāhī) in Srinagar in 1050/1640 (Rāšedī, p. 125). Elāhī has a tad¨kera (Ḵazīna-yeganj-Elāhī) and a dīvān of about 5,000 verses to his credit, both of which are unpublished. The tad¨kera (comp. between the years 1042/1632 and 1052/1642) includes biographies of 400 poets of the 8th-10th/14th-16th centuries arranged in alphabetical order (Rāšedī, p. 127; Golčīn-e Maʿānī, Taḏkerahā I, p. 518). His dīvān includes qaṣīdas, ḡazals, a tarjīʿ-band, tarkīb-bands, and a sāqī-nāma, but his major contribution as a poet of the so-called Indian Style (sabk-e hendī) is in ḡazals, known for their metonymy in convoluted manner.

 

Bibliography:

Āzād Belgrāmī, Sarv-e-āzād, ed. ʿA.-Ḥ. Mawlawī, Hyderabad, Deccan, 1913.

Moḥammad-Aʿẓam Dīdamarī, Wāqeʿāt-e Kašmīr/Tārīḵ-e aʿẓamī, Aligarh Muslim University, ms. H.G. 32/150 Fars. Golčīn-e Maʿānī, Taḏkerahā I, pp. 518-24.

Idem, Kārvān-e Hend, 2 vols., Tehran, 1369 Š./1980, I, pp. 94-104.

Marshall, Mughals in India, p. 200. Mīrzā Moḥammad-Ṭāher Naṣrābādī, Tad¨kera-ye Naṣrābādī, ed. Ḥ. Waḥīd Dastgerdī, Tehran, 1317 Š./1938.

H. Rāšedī, Tad¨kera-ye šoʿarāʾ-e Kašmīr I, Lahore, 1983.

Rieu, Catalogue II, pp. 687-88. Ṣāfā, Adabīyāt V/2, pp. 1183-92.

G. M. D. Sufi, Kašmīr II, Delhi, 1974.

(M. Asif Naim-Siddiqi)

Originally Published: December 15, 1998

Last Updated: December 13, 2011

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