Asif

Asif is the pen-name of H.H. Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, Nizam of Hyderabad, who died in 1911; the book calls him a pupil of the poet Dagh and an esteemed poet and patron of poets. (The book names him, not the earlier Asaf-ud-Daula of Lucknow.)

The 4 pieces given here are drawn from Hindustani Lyrics (London: The Sufi Publishing Society, 1919), in the English verse of Inayat Khan and Jessie Duncan Westbrook. They are free renderings, not literal translations, and the original Urdu poems are untitled; each is named here by its first line.