Agha Ahmad Ali

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Dacca, Bengal Presidency (modern-day Bangladesh)
OccupationPoet
PredecessorMunshi Mutasim Billah, Khwaja Asadullah Kawkab
SuccessorMuhammad Ashraf, Abdus Samad Fida
Parent
  • Agha Shaja'at Ali (father)

Maulawi Āghā Aḥmad ʿAlī (Persian: آغا احمد علي, Bengali: আগা আহমদ আলী) was a 19th-century Bengali academic, historian and scholar of the Persian language. In addition to Persian, he also composed poetry in Urdu. He is seen as one of the greatest Persian scholars of Dhaka,[1] and even Bengal as a whole.[2]

Life

Agha Ahmad Ali's grandfather Agha Abdul Ali was a calligraphist who originated from Isfahan in Iran and settled in the city of Dhaka during Nader Shah's invasion of India. Ahmad's father was Agha Shajaat Ali, who had a hobby of collecting rare manuscripts. Ahmad studied Persian locally with Munshi Mutasim Billah[citation needed] as well as Khwaja Asadullah Kawkab, a noteworthy poet of the Dhaka Nawab family.[3] He developed a personal library of over 2000 books. It is said that he completed all valuable books in the city of Dhaka some time between 1856 and 1860.[according to whom?]

Ali involved himself in a literary competition with

Urdu: شمشیر تیزتر, Sharper Sword) but he had it published under the name of his student Maulvi Abdus Samad Fida Sylheti.[5]
Ghalib's two pupils Syed Mohammad Baqir Ali Baqir and Khwaja Syed Fakhruddin Husain Sukhan responded. The four qataa were compiled as the Dil Ashob Hangama (Heart ravaging fight) in April 1867. Ali then replied with another qataa, again under Fida's name, and compiled all 5 and published it as Tez-i-Teghtar.

In 1862, he established the Calcutta Madrasah-i-Ahmadiyah (named after himself and not related to the

langar khana
of Mirza Saheb.

Works

Agha Ahmad Ali worked closely with The Asiatic Society and contributed heavily to the Bibliotheca Indica. He wrote a number of commentaries on historical works such as:[8]

Some of his other works included:

  • Haft Asman (history of Persian masnavi, 1869)
  • Muayyid-i-Burhan (1865) and Shamsher-i-Teztar (both on Persian lexology, 1868)
  • Risalah-i-Taranah (on Persian rubaʿi, 1866)
  • Risalah-i-Ishtiqaq (on Persian grammar, 1872)
  • Risalah-e-Mukhtasar Al-Ishtiqaq (abridged version of the former)
  • Tarikh-i-Dhaka (history of Dhaka, 1865)[2]

References

  1. Allahabad
    : The Pioneer Press. p. 62.
  2. ^ a b Sirajul Islam (1992). History of Bangladesh, 1704-1971. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. pp. 446–447.
  3. OL 30677644M
    . Retrieved 26 April 2024.
  4. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society
    . p. 24.
  5. ^ Javed Husayn. "মির্জা গালিবের নিন্দুকেরা". Prothom Alo (in Bengali).
  6. ^ Abdullah, Muhammad (1991). ঢাকার কয়েকজন মুসলিম সুধী (in Bengali). Islamic Foundation Bangladesh. p. 201.
  7. OL 30677644M
    . Retrieved 26 April 2024.
  8. ^ "February 1874: Bibliotheca Indica: Arabic and Persian". Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The Asiatic Society: 33–34. 1875.
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