Insha Allah Khan

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. Eventually, Insha fell from the ruler's grace after making a joke at his expense. He spent his last years bereft of patronage, in poor health, till his death in 1817.

Work Insha was a versatile poet, who composed verses in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and occasionally in Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Purabi, Marwari, Pashto and Turkish. His chief works are collected in his diwan Kullyat-i-Insha, consisting of Urdu and Persian ghazals, as well as a volume of poems in rekhti (imitating the colloquial speech of women). He wrote ghazals, rubaiyat (quatrains), qatat in many languages, several Urdu and Persian masnavis,