Nazeer Akbarabadi

Nazeer Akbarabadi (1735–1830), born Wali Muhammad, was an Indian Urdu poet known as the Father of Nazm, who wrote in the everyday language of the common people and became their poet ¹.

Wali Muhammad was born in Delhi; his father was Muhammad Farooq and his mother a daughter of Nawab Sultan Khan, governor of Agra Fort ¹. He was a child when Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, and eighteen years later, when Ahmad Shah Abdali attacked in 1757, he left with his mother and grandmother for Akbarabad — Agra — where he lived the rest of his life and from which he took his name ¹.

His verse is said to have run to some 200,000 couplets, of which only about 6,000 survive in print ¹. He wrote nazms on every side of daily life — the festivals of Muslims and Hindus, Eid, Shab-e-baraat, Diwali and Holi, fruits and birds and seasons, poverty and leprosy — in language close to the speech of the bazaar, which made him beloved of the masses and late to be recognised by the critics ¹. His best remembered poem is the Banjaranama, a satire on worldly pride, and among his contemporaries were Sauda, Mir Taqi Mir, Insha Allah Khan Insha and Mushafi ¹. In 1954 Habib Tanvir built his first significant play, Agra Bazar, on Nazeer's works and times ¹.

No source read names a school or order for the man himself; his even-handed treatment of Muslim and Hindu festivals is the subject matter of his poetry, not an attestation of affiliation, and Wikidata gives only Islam ^{1 2}. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown.

His birth year is debated — the English article says the date is not certain but that most biographers give Delhi in 1735, while the Hindi article gives 1740 ^{1 3}. The English article's infobox contradicts its own body, giving Agra as his birth place and Delhi as his death place; the museum follows the body and Wikidata — born in Delhi, died in Agra ^{1 2}. Wikidata's day-precision death date, 16 August 1830, is supported by no article text and is not built ².