Musaddas is considered a poem which infused new life in a dead Quom; It caused Sir Syed to remark, If Allah asks me what I have brought from the world, I will say that I brought Musaddas from the pen of Hali. Hali’s dirge for the Muslims of India who, by the end of the nineteenth century, had become a rudderless Quom, is required reading for all those who wish to understand the underlying spirit of Islam, especially today when Islam has become a great enigma for the world. The whiplash of Hali’s 294 six-line verses struck deep at the Quom when the epic was first published in 1879. Since then the book has been a prized possession in every educated Muslim’s home. Hali’s message to Indian Muslims-acquisition of knowledge and wisdom is the key to open prisons of backwardness and ignorance-is as relevant today as it was then. Maulana Altaf Husain Hali was born in Panipat (formerly in Punjab, now in Haryana) in 1837. His early education was according to the Panipat tradition-memorizing the Quran and studying preliminary books of Persian and Arabic. He got married when he was seventeen, and from age nineteen on, worked variously in Hissar, Mustafabad, Lahore and Delhi. He started writing poetry on the encouragement of Mirza Ghalib, who was not known to encourage budding poets. He wrote Musaddas at the request of Sir Saiyad Ahmed Khan, thinker, philosopher and founder of the Aligarh movement, who exhorted Hali to use his immense talent to write something which would rouse the Muslims from their supine inertia. Hali was a great believer in modern education and women’s empowerment. He was a strict follower of the tenets of Islam and Shariah but totally free from bigotry. He wrote seventeen books of prose and poetry. He died in Panipat in 1914 and is buried in the Dargah of Qalandar Sahib.
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