Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, the great Urdu and Persian poet, was born in Agra (India) in 1797. His paternal grandfather had migrated from Samarqand, settling first in Lahore and then in Delhi. The family pursued military careers and lived a prosperous life. Ghalib’s maternal grandfather, Khvaja Ghulam Husain Kamidan, was a nobleman of importance, a former commander of Mughal forces in Agra. There were no poets among his ancestors that we know of. Ghalib spent his childhood in Agra because his father Abdullah Beg seemed to have led the itinerant life of a soldier and was killed fighting rebellious forces for the ruler of Alvar, when Ghalib was only five. Another tragedy, the sudden death of his paternal uncle and guardian, Nasrullah Beg (d. 1806), compounded the pain of losing his…
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Citation: Afshan Farooqi, Mehr. "Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 September 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12601, accessed 31 October 2024.]
