Khwaja Hasan Nizami

Khwaja Hasan Nizami (born Syed Ali Hasan; 26 December 1878 – 31 July 1955) was an Indian Sufi saint and a noted Urdu essayist, humorist and satirist who wrote many essays for the Makhzan Akhbar magazine.¹ The Urdu article calls him a Sufi of the Chishti silsila and an Urdu writer, and records that he was born at the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, where his father was attached to the shrine.²

His maternal grandfather, Ghulam Hasan Chisti, was a friend and spiritual adviser to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, and frequently visited the Red Fort; his mother told him the stories of the Mughal family she had heard from her father, and he himself met Zafar's daughter Kulsum Zamani Begum.¹ The Urdu article adds that he received no formal schooling but educated himself, attaining command of Arabic, Persian and Urdu, and that he began by carrying bundles of books on foot from Old Delhi to New Delhi to sell.²

He is credited with more than five hundred books on an amazing variety of subjects, including accounts of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.¹ Among his many books are Fatami Dawat-i-Islam (1920), Gadar ki Subah aur Sham, Krishan Beeti, Begumat Kay Ansoo ("Tears of the Begums", stories of survivors of the uprising of 1857), and his autobiography Ap Biti; he also published Bahadur Shah Zafar's diary.¹ The Urdu article puts his works at around forty by one count and near three hundred by another, and notes his journalistic career with the newspapers Raiyyat, Munadi and his own Tauheed, published from Meerut.²

He was of Nizamuddin Auliya's known silsila, and widely honoured in the Muslim world.¹ Being a Sufi, he had many disciples, and it appeared in his literature.¹ The Urdu article states that he maintained the practice of piri-muridi — taking and guiding disciples — and that countless people entered his circle of discipleship.²

After Partition in 1947, most of Delhi's Muslims had migrated to Pakistan and the city had no Shia orator to address the majlis during Muharram; Nizami filled the gap by addressing the majlis at Panja Sharif, supported by Maulana Ahmad Saeed, Maulana Zubair Qureshi and Justice Vyas Dev Mishra, despite his himself being part of the Ahl us Sannah wal Jammah.¹

He died on 31 July 1955 in Delhi and was buried within the enclosure of Nizamuddin Auliya's shrine.² A doctoral thesis has been written on him by Dr Majid Deobandi, and Marcia Hermansen of Loyola University Chicago has compiled a bibliography of his publications.¹

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