Insha Allah Khan
Indian author
Syed Insha Allah Khan (c. 1752 – 19 May 1817), known as Insha, was an Indian poet and writer in Urdu, Persian and Hindi. A multi-talented polyglot in the courts of Lucknow and Delhi in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, he was the author of the first grammar of the Urdu language, Darya-e-Latafat, which was written in Persian.
Life
Insha's father, Syed Hakim Mir Masha Allah Khan, was a famous physician and aristocrat. During a period of disturbance in Delhi, he moved to Murshidabad in Bengal, where Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula was his patron. His son Insha was born in Murshidabad.
During the reign of Shah Alam II, Insha came to Delhi. In 1780, he joined the army of Mirza Najaf Khan, and later gained access to the royal court. His poetic skills and sarcastic wit made him well-known, and also unpopular with the poets of Delhi, such as Mirza Azim Beg. After the decline of Mughal power which led to the blinding of Shah Alam II in 1788, Insha decided to try his luck in Lucknow.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Insha Allah Khan” is indian author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Insha, Allah and Khan, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1664527. VIAF identifies the subject as 19962858. The Library of Congress control number is n82054839. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1752, 1817, 1780 and 1788.
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This entry incorporates text from “Insha Allah Khan” 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.