Nazeer Akbarabadi
One of the most prominent classical Urdu poets who wrote extensively on Indian culture & festivals, contemporary of Mir Taqi Mir, famous for his poems on Holi, Diwali, and Lord Krishna.
Nazeer Akbarabadi (born Wali Muhammad; 1735 – 1830) was an 18th-century Indian poet known as the "Father of Nazm", who wrote Urdu ghazals and nazms under the pen name (takhallus) "Nazeer", most remembered for his poems like Banjaranama (Chronicle of the Nomad), a satire.
Early life
His father was Muhammad Farooq and his mother was the daughter of Nawab Sultan Khan who was the governor of Agra Fort. Agra, the Indian city, was known as Akbarabad after Mughal emperor Akbar at that time.
Nazeer's date of birth is not certain but most of his biographers believe that he was born in Delhi (then called "Dihli") in 1735 AD. The period of his birth coincided with the decline of the Mughal Empire in India. Nazeer was still a child in 1739 when Nadir Shah attacked Delhi and the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (also known as "Muhammad Shah Rangila") was arrested. Though Muhammad Shah was later released, countless people were killed in Delhi. Eighteen years later, in 1757 AD, Ahmad Shah Abdali attacked Delhi, and people left Delhi for safer cities. Nazeer, along with his mother and grandmother, abandoned Delhi and migrated to Akbarabad.
Poetry
It is said that Nazeer's poetic works consisted of about 200,000 verses, but the majority have been destroyed and only 6,000 verses are available in printed form. No other Urdu poet before him had used as many words as Nazeer did.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3695734. VIAF identifies the subject as 54423259. The Library of Congress control number is n88012870. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1735, 1830, 1739 and 1757.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nazeer Akbarabadi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.