Interview – Khurshid Rizvi

1. Your mother opened doors to Urdu poetry for you. What memories do you have of this early phase?

My father died when I was four years old. I had a younger sister who also died as a child. So my mother invested all her energy in me. She had a natural attachment to poetry. I recall as a child, she would recite the Qur’an and some poetic supplications after her morning prayers. She would do this in a specific rhythm. I still remember a few lines from these supplications-

Jab ho meri umr ka waqte akheer,
Dastgiri kar meri aye dastageer.
Tangdasti se budhape ki bacha,
De mujhe rozi zyada aye Khuda…

When I reach the twilight of my years,
O Helper of all, please calm my fears.
Shield me, Lord, from old age in despair,
Bless me with more sustenance and care.

Sabse achche hoN mere pichle amal,
Sabse achcha waqt ho waqte ajal.
Aur miloon jis roz tujhse aye ghani,
Sabse achcha roz ho mera wahi

May my last deeds be my very best,
And my final hour outshine the rest.
And when, O Generous One, I meet Thee
Let that day be the finest for me.

She also sometimes recited a hamdiya nazm (a poem for God)-

Aye Khuda shak nahin isme ke gunahgaar hooN maiN,
Qaul tera hi magar ye hai ke ghafaar hoon maiN…

O Lord, there’s no doubt I’ve sinned with my name,
But You have declared: Forgiving is Your name.

These rhythmic supplications became a part of my childhood. Perhaps the rhythm I discovered within myself was a result of this very influence of my upbringing.

My mother, overall, had a fondness for poetry and would relish appreciating a good Urdu couplet. Although she wasn’t formally educated, she could easily identify a fine couplet.

In 1965, I worked in Sargodha, and she stayed with me. We had a radio at that time, and she enjoyed listening to mushairas and other programmes. On one such occasion, she said that out of the whole mushaira, she liked two couplets the most. One was by Muzaffar Warsi-

Chalta huN to padhte hai qadam mere hawa par,
Darta huN hawa chalne se inkaar na kar de.

When I walk, even the breeze reads the steps I take,
I fear it might refuse to blow, for my own sake.

The other was by Ahmad Faraz-

Raat kya soye ke baaqi umr ki neend ud gayi,
Khwaab kya dekha ke dhadhka lag gaya taabeer ka.

What a night’s sleep, it stole all slumber from my years,
What a dream, its meaning struck and shook me with fear.

She had a strong grasp of poetic meter and recited couplets with flawless precision. That rubbed off on me as well.

2. Between ghazal and nazm, which poetic form do you find easier to work with? Any couplets written by you that reflect well on your journey so far or the philosophy of your life?

I have an affinity for both nazm and ghazal, and I have composed in each. When a verse comes naturally, it brings along its form, as though it chooses its mould and imposes its rhythm. That said, I have been relatively more inclined towards ghazal.

Selection of your own verses is a difficult task, but I would share some that come to my mind-

Lut gaya sau baar lab tak aate aate har sukhan,
Warna jab dil se chala thha ek ajab ganjeena thha.

 Hum ahle junoon hain hume faarigh na samjhna,
Kar jayenge wo jiska irada nahin hoga. 

Haye agar sukhan azeez to mashkhe sukhan na kar,
Ye dil ka dard hai koi sanatgiri nahin.

Yahi raha hai hamesha se zindagi ka mizaaj,
Hujoom-e-jalwa hai aur neend aayi jaati hai.

Ye daur wo hai ke baithe raho chiragh tale,
Sabhi ko bazm me dekho magar dikhayi na do.

A hundred times the thought collapsed upon my lips,
Each word erased — though from the heart, it rose a gem.

We are the ones consumed by passion’s flame
Don’t take us idle, we’ll do what we never meant to begin.

If you hold verse too dear, then don’t rehearse it so
This is heartache, not some artisan’s display.

This has ever been the nature of life itself
A riot of beauty, yet sleep keeps closing in.

Such are the times sit beneath the brightest lamp
And be at the gathering, yet remain unseen.

3. Dr Sufi Muhammad Ziaul Haq greatly helped you comprehend Arabic’s building blocks. Did your Arabic translation exercises, as a postal correspondence with him, lay the foundation for your extensive translation work that you did later on?

Yes. He was my ustad who laid great emphasis on the Urdu-to-Arabic translation. He taught me Arabic grammar while discussing translations and the mistakes I made. So I did not study from a formal book per se, but the sessions with Dr Sufi Muhammad made me remember the grammar rules well. In my third year at Government College Montgomery, which is now Government Postgraduate College Sahiwal, Dr Sufi was transferred to Government College Lahore. But he emphasised, before leaving, that I should continue with my translations and send him one translation every day by post. I followed his instructions religiously by mailing him one translation each day and received a corrected copy from him the next day. The copy from him had all corrections in red with marks awarded for the effort. These exchanges continued until I took admission in M.A. in Lahore and started visiting him in person. This helped me so much that I started taking notes in Arabic even when his lecture was in Urdu.

I remember, initially, when I finished all the help books available for Arabic translation in the college library for translation purposes, he started giving me assignments from newspapers and magazines. I have no qualms in saying that he laid the foundation of Arabic translation for me and my subsequent works in this area, including Tareekh-e-uloom mein Tehzeeb-e-Islaami ka Muqam (Arabic to Urdu – based on the lectures of Dr Fuat Sezgin across multiple sciences) and Hukm al-Mahkamat-al-Shar’iyyah (English to Arabic – judgment of the Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan on bank interest). For the latter, I had to collect specialised dictionaries to comprehend the jargon used by courts, ulama, bankers, and economists.

4. You edited ‘Qalaid al-Juman’ – a biographical anthology of poets in Arabic – for nine years. How difficult was it to work on the manuscript, particularly with its 13th-century Arabic text?

The compiler of this book, Ibn al-Sha”ar al-Mawsili, was a resident of Mosul, Iraq. He had a passion for selecting poetry from the very beginning. He began Qalaid al-Juman as a general compilation, but later narrowed it to focus on contemporary poets. He met them personally to create their biographical sketches, along with sample works in 10 volumes. He died in 654 Hijri (1256 AD), two years before the city of Baghdad was destroyed.

In those times, as a book became popular, scribes created more copies from the original manuscript. Tragedy struck the voluminous book as just two years after the compiler’s demise, the ensuing violence left it without a copy. Two volumes (the second and eighth) were also lost during this turbulent time. It is also possible that we may find them someday. The rest survived, and the original eight volumes of the manuscript under its more popular title Uqud al-Juman sit in the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul, Turkey, as part of the Esad Efendi collection. Egypt then used microfilms to create copies of the book and preserve it in one of its libraries.

I was introduced to Uqud al-Juman in 1976. One of my teachers, Ameenullah Waseer (Head of Department of Arabic (HoD), Punjab University), suggested that I pursue a PhD and introduced me to Dr Rana Ehsan Ilahi in Lahore. Dr Rana gave me the option to choose between manuscript editing of poetry or prose. I chose poetry, and that is when he showed me the microfilm of the first volume of the book and had a few pages printed for me to do a sample edit. He was satisfied when I showed him my effort and asked me to work on 120 pages of volume one for the PhD. I was in Sargodha at the time, with no access to a microfilm reader. As a turnaround, I used a traditional projector to read it and also got some prints made. It was a challenging task, but I thoroughly enjoyed editing it over five years. I received my PhD in 1981.

All this effort piqued my interest in the book. I then proceeded on deputation to the Idara Tahqiqat-e-Islami (Institute of Islamic Research), which later became part of the Islamic University in Islamabad, to further read the book. I also began collecting microfilms of the book and even asked a friend to bring a few from Egypt. Eventually, I collected all eight volumes on microfilm and even offered the institute these microfilms for printing and storing in their library.

I also realised that there was little information available on the compiler. I first collected all first-person references (people he met and interviewed, places he visited, and the year of his visits, etc.) in the book and then organised them in chronological order. This was the first such attempt to document his life and activities. I then published two articles in Arabic in the journal Ad-Dirasat al-Islamiyyah: one was an introduction to the book, and the other was on the compiler. The University of Mosul took particular interest in my articles because Ibn al-Sha’ar was from the city. I received a letter from Muhammad Qasim Mustafa, likely a Hod at the university, seeking my interest in helping them to edit and print an edited copy of the manuscript. They gave me a much obliterated sixth volume for editing, which nobody else had taken on for obvious reasons. I worked on it for nine years, but then the Iraq invasion happened and all hell broke loose. I was ready with the book, but Qasim was not reachable as he may have fled the country. When I contacted the university, the new HoD gave me a grim picture of the state of affairs. They were keen to get it printed, but not sure when.

I then decided to donate the book to the Sheikh Zayed Islamic Centre in the Punjab University, Lahore. Dr Jamila Shaukat was the director at the time. She was kind enough to publish a neat copy of the sixth volume of Qalaid al-Juman.

The book gained recognition in the Arab world, leading to the well-known researcher Kamil Salman Al Jaburi editing all volumes of the book. He obtained the sixth volume, which I had edited and credited me generously in the footnotes of his edited version.

I had no problem in comprehending the language, as it was classical Arabic, which I was well-versed in. My biggest challenge was reading the text. The copy I had was a reproduction of a copy, thrice removed from the original book, and so not clear.

5. Your book ‘Arabi Adab Qabl Az Islam’ (Arabic literature before Islam) researches a phase of Arabic literature that was seemingly not covered much. Could it be that religious sensibilities restricted creative expressions to qasidas and hamasa, and most of the other oral forms were allowed to fade away, and so were not documented at all?

 I wrote Arabi Adab Qabl Az Islam in two volumes, and the story behind it is deeply tied to my ustad, Dr. Sufi. During my student days, whenever I would visit him, there was only one widely available book on the history of Arabic literature — and that was Nicholson’s A Literary History of the Arabs. No other substantial book was known to us at that time, especially not in Urdu. Occasionally, Dr. Sufi would remark: “Look at how many eras Nicholson has packed into one volume. How can that do justice to Arabic literature?” He would say that, at the very least, someone should take the approach of E.G. Browne, who wrote a four-volume history of Persian literature.

Influenced by such conversations, around 1967, I began to feel that I should undertake the task of writing a more detailed and comprehensive book on Arabic literature. I imagined it could span eight to ten volumes. Of course, in one’s youth, these grand ideas feel quite attainable. It’s like that line by Longfellow-

A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

At that time, writing ten volumes didn’t seem like a big deal to me, so I began the work and continued on it for about five or six years. However, the demands of life soon took over, and the project was suspended.

I must acknowledge, with gratitude, that my wife preserved all my handwritten notes with great care in a sealed plastic bag. About 35 years later, I suddenly remembered that earlier project. I assumed the material would no longer be usable after so much time, but when I opened those notes, I realised they were still valuable. I discussed it with my late friend Syed Muhammad Kazim, a man of profound knowledge and a deep love for Arabic literature. He encouraged me to publish it. At that time, Savera, a reputable literary journal, also became aware of it and offered me support. I revised and polished the notes a little and submitted them.

I continued editing portions over time. My work extended to the Mu’allaqat (the renowned pre-Islamic odes), and that became the focus of the first volume. The second volume covered other major poets of the Jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic) period. Each volume took me nearly ten years to complete. I had already noted in the first volume that I no longer believed I could fulfil the youthful ambition of writing ten complete volumes. Thirty years had passed since then, and the reality of age set in.

Another twenty years later, I realised that I had done what I could — and made it clear that I would only complete the Jahiliyyah period in two volumes. The rest would have to be carried forward by future scholars. So I finished those two volumes. By then, I had passed the age of eighty, and investing another ten years per volume was no longer feasible. Instead, I decided to focus on smaller projects that could be completed in six months to a year.

You asked whether there was a lack of work in this area — the answer is no. There were good sources available in Arabic and English. However, in Urdu, there was no comprehensive work. Abdul Aleem Nadwi had initiated a project in India and published three volumes, which were commendable; however, what I was attempting had its own style. Even today, many consider my work to be among the most comprehensive.

There were no religious reasons for ignoring the pre-Islamic period in Islamic history; instead, the main issue was that pre-Islamic Arabs lacked a literary culture of writing and preserving texts. What little existed was preserved orally and eventually recorded, although it underwent distortions and interpolations. However, these were natural and not ideologically motivated. Scholars of early Islam often referred to Jahiliyyah poetry to aid in understanding the Qur’an.

6. You are a teacher, poet, writer, researcher, translator, and critic. Which of these roles gives you the maximum satisfaction?

 Fundamentally, for a person who is a poet – all other things come later – the core instinct is poetry. To date, eight of my poetry collections have been published. Most of my contribution has been in Ghazal, but I’ve also written nazm. There is also a portion that falls under religious poetry, including hamd (praise of God), naat (praise of the Prophet), marsiya (elegy on the tragedy of Karbala), salam (salutation to the martyrs of Karbala), and manqabat (devotional poems praising saints). These, too, have been compiled in a separate collection. Eventually, all eight collections were compiled and published as a single, consolidated volume. So, I believe that the most fundamental aspect of my identity is that of a poet.

However, I’ve also always had a deep intellectual curiosity. Of the various roles you mentioned, the role of a teacher is the one that satisfies me the most — because even in such a chaotic world, this is still one role that holds real meaning: when a teacher teaches with dedication, sincerity, and heart, even if only for the duration of the class, that act remains meaningful. In a world where many things seem to have lost their significance, this role still holds purpose for me.

I developed a deep interest in this path from a very young age and began teaching even before I turned twenty. I never sat for the civil service or other competitive exams that people take to become officers, because I always knew that the role of a teacher was what I truly loved.

The responsibility and role that come with being a teacher – if one has no passion for research, for writing, for critical reflection, then they cannot truly be a teacher.

I would say that the two identities that bring me the most satisfaction are those of the poet and the teacher.

7. There have been numerous writers from Amroha. Is there anyone that you particularly like?

Amroha has always been a cradle of knowledge. It produced not only poets and writers but also scholars, sages, physicians, and thinkers of great repute. Consider the literary giants, such as Mus’hafi, one of the most significant early poets of Urdu. Or in the domain of hadith, my maternal ancestor Ahmad Hasan ‘Muhaddis’ Amrohvi, a revered scholar. In the arts, we had greats like Sadequain (a painter), Jaun Elia (a poet) and Kamal Amrohi (a filmmaker). The land has given birth to remarkable individuals in every field. Even in the sphere of national service and education, we find names like Viqar-ul-Mulk, a close associate of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and a contributor to national causes.

8. You spent only a couple of days in Amroha in 2007. Anything new that particularly caught your attention?

 The love for one’s homeland is beyond expression. It is innate and immense. I must have left for Pakistan before I was eight years old, and got the chance to return only after sixty years. In 2007, I finally visited Amroha again, though only for two or three days. What struck me most—and left me both surprised and strangely moved—was how little had changed. Amroha was almost exactly as I had left it in my childhood.

Any change that had occurred seemed merely cosmetic. I could still recognise the narrow streets, the old homes, their contours preserved precisely as they lived in my memory. Strangely, the childhood impression of spaces often seems larger than reality when revisited as an adult. But in Amroha, the scale and feel were as I remembered.

Our neighbourhood, Chahghori, which in common parlance was known as Gori Kuan, where my maternal family lived — and where I spent a significant part of my childhood after my father’s passing — was virtually unchanged. I remember the neighbourhood mosque from when I was perhaps five years old. I had only seen it from the outside back then, but I had a strong impression of its interior. Upon returning decades later and praying there, I found it to be just as I had imagined it. That feeling was truly profound.

Another thing that struck me was the still-connected social fabric—a kind of architectural closeness and community layout that is rarely found today. In many localities in Amroha, it takes time to walk from your door to the main road. But locals have tiny, arched doorways in shared walls between homes — windows or passages through which you simply duck your head and pass through to a neighbour’s courtyard, then another, and eventually find yourself outside. This organic connectivity of houses reflects a society built on mutual trust and shared living.

That same simplicity — both social and economic — still pervades. The economic conditions of the people seemed largely unchanged. And perhaps that’s precisely what helped preserve Amroha’s old character. Prosperity might have brought modernisation and changed the face of the town entirely. However, only a few houses remained that had visibly developed or modernised. The lifestyle, overall, retained its simplicity and modesty.

Being my birthplace — my ancestral land — Amroha holds a deep emotional pull for me. It’s hard to put into words, but it touched me in many ways.

As for the town’s historical association with mangoes, yes, the abundance of mango orchards still persists. Almost every household, no matter how small, had at least a tiny grove or a couple of mango trees. However, the common phrase that Amroha is famous for — mangoes and rohu fish —has always puzzled me. While mangoes are in abundance, the same can’t be said for rohu — after all, there’s only the stream Sot. I once read that the phrase might be a relic of an ancient king’s name. It could also be a poetic metaphor, ‘amraiyyan’— but such things are speculative. What matters more is how traditions endure.