Mir shaped Urdu while mourning a sacked Delhi
Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810) helped forge Rekhta—Hindustani leavened with Persian—into the language of the Urdu ghazal. After Ahmad Shah Abdali's raids wrecked Delhi, he fled to Lucknow in 1782; his Kulliyat holds 13,585 couplets, and even Ghalib later tipped his hat.
Born Mir Muhammad Taqi in Agra (then Akbarabad) in February or August 1723, he took the takhallus Mir. His father Mir Abdullah stressed love and compassion; after the father's death left debts, teenage Mir went to Delhi for schooling and patrons, including a daily allowance from Khan-i Dauran. His Persian autobiography Zikr-e-Mir covers childhood through early Lucknow years yet, scholars note, conceals as much as it reveals—so many biographical details stay speculative.
He lived long at Kuchha Chelan in Old Delhi. Yearly sackings by Ahmad Shah Abdali from 1748 onward drove him, grieving, toward Asaf-ud-Daulah's Lucknow invitation. There courtiers found him old-fashioned; he scorned Jur'at's verse as mere "kissing and cuddling," strained ties with his patron, and spent late years isolated after his daughter's, son's, and wife's deaths. He died 21 September 1810 after a purgative overdose; railway tracks later covered the grave, with a 1970s cenotaph nearby.
Six diwans of the Kulliyat mix ghazal, masnavi, qasida, and satire; Mu'amlat-e-Ishq ranks among Urdu's great love narratives. A Sayyid of Amroha urged him to write Urdu verse resembling Persian, and Mir practiced until the city's literati noticed. Pathos over Delhi's ruin and family loss marks his tone; he also wrote Persian verse and prose. Contemporaries compared him with Sauda; Ghalib and Zauq both acknowledged his genius in couplets of their own, cementing his place as a hinge between classical Persianate craft and modern Urdu feeling.
Source: Mir Taqi Mir
