Abstract
Economic historian C. A. Bayly remarks, “The Muslim poets of Delhi and Agra wove a literary motif out of decline and rarely noted the bustling bazaars behind the decaying palaces.”3 In fact, the teeming life of markets, streets, and social gatherings animates much Urdu poetry of the time. Rekhtī and nonmystical rekhta evoke the romance of real things, people, and places. Characters in this poetry connect not just through words or thoughts but through letters, gifts, purchases, shared clothing, and food. They design their personalities by fashioning individual styles.
Kyā balā hotī hai kuchh aisī hī dillī kī t̤arḥ
Ki paṛe phiriye jale pāṅ w kī billī kī t̤arḥ
What a pain the modes of Delhi are—
One has to roam around like a cat with burnt feet1
—Inshā2
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Notes
C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 78.
Ayaz Ahmed and Maharaj Krishen Kaul, ed., Kulliyat-i Rekhti (Lucknow: Urdu and Teaching Research Center, 2010), 114: 34. Hereafter cited as KtR.
J. P. Losty, Delhi 360 Degrees (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2012), reproduces early nineteenth-century paintings by Mazhar Ali Khan, which show adjoined rooftops in Delhi.
See Veena Oldenburg, “The Making of Colonial Lucknow 1856–1877,” in The Lucknow Omnibus (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 120.
Intizar Husain, Dilli Tha Jis ka Nam (Lahore: Sang-i Mil Publications, 2007), 61.
Sa‘adat Yar Khan Rangin, Majalis-i Rangin, ed. Sayyid ‘Ali Haidar (Patna: Idara Tahqiqat-e Arabi-o Farsi, 1990), 42.
Faruq Argali, Rekhti (New Delhi: Farid Book Depot, 2006), 175.
Khalil-ur Rahman Da‘udi, ed., Kulliyat-i Insha (Lahore: Lahore Majlis-i Taraqqi-yi Adab, 1969), 242: 235, 4th qi̤t‘a. Hereafter cited as KtI.
Khwaja Altaf Hussain Hali, Voices of Silence: English translation of Khwaja Altaf Hussain Hali’s Majalis un-Nissa and Chup ki dad, trans. Gail Minault (New Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1986), 49.
Devendra Sarma Indra, ed., Mahakavi Bihari ki Amara Krti Bihari Satasai (Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, 1964), 91:192.
Nazir Akbarabadi, Kulliyat-i Nazir (Delhi: Kitabi Duniya, 2003), 282: 612.
Translation by Saleem Kidwai, in Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 226.
Mirza Muhammad ‘Askari, ed., Kalam-i Insha (Allahabad: Hindustani Akadmi, 1952), 412: 34. Hereafter cited as KI.
M. Habib Khan, Inshaullah Khan “Insha” (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1996), 63.
John P. Jones, India: Its Life and Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1908), 314.
Sa‘adat Yar Khan Rangīn Dehlvi, Masnavi Dilpazir, ed., Sayyid Sulaiman Husain (Lucknow: Nizami Press, 1992), 147.
Shohini Ghosh, “Queer Pleasures for Queer People: Film, Television and Queer Sexuality in India,” in Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, ed. Ruth Vanita (New York: Routledge, 2002), 207–21.
Mir Insha Allah Khan Insha, Daryā-ĕ Lat̤āfat, trans. into Urdu by Pandit Brijmohan Dattatreya “Kaifi” (Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, 1988), 66. Hereafter cited as D-eL.
P. C. Mookherji, The Pictorial Lucknow (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2003), 82–83.
Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, in The Lucknow Omnibus (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
W. Crooke, ed., Observations on the Mussulmauns of India by Mrs Meer Hassan Ali Descriptive of Their Manners, Customs, Habits and Religious Opinions Made During a Twelve Years’ Residence in Their Immediate Society (1832; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 60–61.
John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Classical Urdu, Hindi and English (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997), 799.
On this shift in meaning, see Muzaffar Alam, “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan,” in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 131–98.
See Vidya Dehejia, The Body Adorned: Sacred and Profane in Indian Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
Ghulam Yazdani, “Narnaul and Its Buildings,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3 (1907): 581–86.
Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York: Hill & Wang, 2006), 201.
David Shea and Anthony Troyer, trans., The Dabistan or School of Manners (Paris: Oriental Translation Fund, 1843), 3:235n1.
John P. Jones, India: Its Life (New York: Macmillan, 1908), 314.
Muhammad Taqi Ahmad, trans., Tarikh Badshah Begam (1938; Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1977), 9–10.
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© 2012 Ruth Vanita
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Vanita, R. (2012). Women in the City. In: Gender, Sex, and the City. Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016560_2
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