Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi

Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi (1830–1912), known by his official byname Deputy Nazir Ahmad, was an Urdu novelist and writer from Bijnor, regarded as the first novelist of Urdu literature for Mirat-ul-Uroos (1869), written originally to educate his daughters. ^{1 2} He began as a schoolteacher, rose through the British revenue administration to deputy collector — the office that gave him his famous name — served the Nizam's Hyderabad, translated the Qur'an into idiomatic Urdu, and became a celebrated orator of the Muhammadan Educational Conference. ^{2 1}

His birth year is unusually contested: the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi adjudicates for 6 December 1830 and states expressly that the 1833 date found in this article's English Wikipedia lead is wrong, while every source agrees that he died at Delhi on 3 May 1912. ^{2 1} The data record sets out the whole conflict.

Nazir Ahmad was born at Rehar village in Bijnor district — on 6 December 1830 according to TDV — into a family of scholars; his father Maulvi Saadat Ali was a madrasa teacher. TDV traces his ancestry to a family whose elders included a khalifa (successor) of the Sufi shaykh Abdul Quddus Gangohi: family background, recorded here as such, not as his own affiliation. ^{2 1} He was first educated at home in Persian and Arabic, then studied for three years from the age of nine under Maulana Abdul Alim Nasrullah Khan, alongside his elder brother Ali Ahmad. ²

In 1842 he went to Delhi and studied under Maulvi Abd ul-Khaliq at the Aurangabadi Mosque madrasa. In January 1846 he entered the Arabic section of Delhi College — not its English programme, for his father had said he would rather see his son die than learn English — and graduated in 1854, having picked up elementary English privately from Munshi Abdullah Khan; his teachers at the college included Mamluk Ali Nanautawi and the mathematics teacher Ram Chandra. ^{2 1} In early 1851 he married the eldest daughter of Maulvi Abdul Qadir, his teacher Abd ul-Khaliq's son; of their children a son, Bashiruddin Ahmad, and two daughters, Sakina and Sughra, survived him. TDV also records a second, short-lived marriage at Bijnor in 1888 at his mother's insistence. ^{2 1}

He began work in September 1854 teaching Arabic at a government school at Kunjah in the Punjab, and two years later became deputy inspector of schools at Cawnpore. ^{2 1} When the rebellion of 1857 broke out he was in Delhi with his family; afterwards he was appointed deputy inspector at Allahabad. In 1858–1859 he improved his English enough to join the board that translated the Indian Penal Code into Urdu (1860–1861) as the Ta'zirat-i Hind, having earlier translated the Income Tax Act at the request of Lieutenant Governor Sir William Muir. ^{2 1}

He then came first in the examination for the revenue service, served as a tehsildar, and in 1863 became deputy collector at Kanpur and then Gorakhpur — the appointment from which "Deputy Nazir Ahmad" derives. ² On 27 April 1877 his services were transferred to Hyderabad Deccan at a high salary — TDV gives Rs 1,200, the Urdu article Rs 800 a month as a settlement officer — where, at the request of the chief minister Salar Jung I, he wrote seven treatises on governance for the education of the young Nizam Mir Mahbub Ali Khan; during this period he memorised the Qur'an in six months and turned to Qur'anic studies. The Urdu article records that Hyderabad offered him the title "Ghayur Jung", which he declined. On Salar Jung's death he resigned in February 1884 and settled in Delhi for the rest of his life. ^{2 3}

In his last phase he gave up fiction for oratory: TDV counts forty-four lectures between 1888 and 1905, many of them the opening addresses of the Muhammadan Educational Conference, where he supported Sir Syed Ahmad Khan — whose travels he shared — though, as TDV notes, he did not follow him blindly and differed from him on some points. The Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam of Lahore invited him to its annual meetings, where his speeches drew throngs. ^{2 1} The government made him Shamsul Ulema — TDV dates the title to 22 June 1894, the Urdu article to 1897 — Edinburgh University gave him an honorary doctorate in law on 3 April 1903 according to TDV (the Urdu article says 1902), and Punjab University an honorary degree in Oriental studies in 1910. ^{2 3}

Struck by paralysis in his last years, he died at Delhi on Friday 3 May 1912 and was buried in the Khwaja Baqi Billah cemetery near New Delhi railway station. ^{3 2}

He wrote more than thirty books on law, logic, ethics, linguistics and fiction. ¹

Mirat-ul-Uroos (The Bride's Mirror, 1869). His first novel and the one regarded as the first novel of Urdu literature. He wrote it between 1865 and 1868 for his eldest daughter — a copy was placed in her dowry — having found no good Urdu books for his daughters' education: a "true to life" picture of a household and its talk, built around two sisters, the foolish elder Akbari and the wise younger Asghari. Matthew Kempson, the Director of Public Instruction, came across the stories at Jhansi and the book was published in 1869; the government bought 2,000 copies and put it into school curricula; Sir William Muir awarded him Rs 1,000, praised the book publicly at the Agra darbar of 1869 and gave him a clock inscribed with his name. G. E. Ward translated it into English (1899; 1903). ^{1 2}

Binat-un-Nash (The Daughters of the Bier, 1872 per TDV). Written as the second volume of Mirat-ul-Uroos, with Asghari now a schoolteacher giving a student lessons in general education and the physical sciences through conversation; girls' education is its core theme. ^{2 1}

Toba tun Nasoh (Sincere Repentance, 1874 per TDV; the English article says 1873). The story of a man who, facing cholera, repents and reforms, on the theme of raising and disciplining children. W. Muir praised the book and in his preface to its English translation called it "an original product of English thought"; Kempson translated its first five chapters (London, 1884). ^{2 1}

The novels continued: Fasana-e-Mubtala, also called Muhsinat (1885), on a man with two wives and the friction of his household; Ibn-ul-Waqt (1888), on a man raised in an old-fashioned home who adopts a Western style of life and fits neither world — a political novel in which some see Sir Syed as the ideal type; Ayama (1891), pressing the remarriage of widows; and Roya-e-Sadiqa (1894 per TDV; the English article says 1892), his last novel. ^{2 1}

The Qur'an translation. In Delhi he spent three years, with four hired maulvis assisting, translating the Qur'an into fluent, idiomatic Urdu with parenthetical phrases to clarify the meaning; TDV dates its completion to 1895 (the English article lists the Tarjuma-i Qur'an under 1896), and it was printed under several titles. ^{1 2} His other books include al-Huquq wa'l-Fara'iz (1906 per TDV), Ijtihad (1907–1908), a dialogue of 172 questions, Ummahat-ul-Ummah (1908), the Mawaiz-e-Hasana (1887), letters written for his son Bashiruddin Ahmad, the poetry collection Majmua-e-Benazir (1909) and his collected lectures, besides his legal translations. ^{2 3}

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

The Arabic article describes him as "among the advocates and followers of the renewal movement led by Sayyid Ahmad Khan". TDV calls the education of girls and the problems of women his most important themes and notes, after Gail Minault, that in 1908 he brought out Ismat, the first women's magazine. ^{4 2} TDV counts him among the five leading figures of Urdu literature and remarks that, unlike Shibli, Sir Syed and others, he addressed every class of people in their own language and understanding. ²

TDV also records his sharper opinions: that the fundamental cause of the Indian Muslims' distance from religion was their distance from the Qur'an; that fiqh education was unnecessary in his time; and that the Qur'anic riba meant multiplied, exorbitant interest, ordinary interest being in his view unobjectionable — a position that increased the criticism against him. ² His novels were criticised for using the vocabulary of "mutiny" (gadr, gaddar) for the 1857 rising, in step with English usage; his Qur'an translation was criticised for being a free-standing prose version rather than an interlinear one, for passages of "street language" and for errors — Ashraf Ali Thanwi wrote a treatise, Islah-i Tarjuma-i Dehlviyya, criticising it. ² The sharpest storm came over Ummahat-ul-Ummah (1908), his reply to a missionary's book attacking the Prophet ﷺ's marriages: many ulama of the day held some of its expressions disrespectful, issued fatwas of unbelief against him, and demonstrations followed; Hakim Ajmal Khan had all copies of the book burned, and copies were again seized and burned after the 1935 reprint. ² TDV also preserves his own remark that, but for his Delhi College education, he would have remained like some of the narrow-minded madrasa teachers of his day. ²

Academic study of his work continues, from Frances Pritchett's afterword presenting Mirat-ul-Uroos as "the first Urdu bestseller" to Ruby Lal's "Gender and Sharafat: Re-reading Nazir Ahmad" (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2008). ¹

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