Ab-e hayat ('Water of Life') (1880) by Muhammad Husain Azad (1830-1910) has been described as the 'most often reprinted, and most widely read, Urdu book of the past century'. Azad's masterpiece was the last classical anthology of Urdu poetry, and the first--and incomparably the most influential--modern literary history. It was also the earliest attempt to analyse along modern lines the historical and linguistic development of the Urdu ...
Ghalib said, “… the poem always slips, like the imaginary anqua bird, through the finest nets of awareness.†This statement aptly defines the myriad moods the ghazal aspires to captureâ€â€¦ various facets of the lover’s experience… lamenting the pain of separation … delighting in imaginary union … feeling alienated from the world,†yet remains mysterious. Frances W. Pritchett recalls her first experience o the ghazal as love at first sight, ...