Shah Hatim

The book calls Hatim one of the early Urdu poets, born about 1700 and living till near the end of the century: a soldier by profession who in old age renounced the world and became a darwesh, with his cell near the gate of the Imperial Palace, where many resorted to him for counsel. The foreword names him, with Wali, as one of the first to write an Urdu diwan.

The one piece given here is drawn from Hindustani Lyrics (London: The Sufi Publishing Society, 1919), in the English verse of Inayat Khan and Jessie Duncan Westbrook. It is a free rendering, not a literal translation, and the original Urdu poem is untitled; it is named here by its first line.