Stories by Syed Nomanul Haq
Muslims’ relationship with Ali is unique in the devotional history of world religions.
Published 12 Jul, 2026 06:56am
In recent years, we have seen emerging on the literary horizon of the Urdu world a sustained Jaun Elia frenzy among...
Updated 10 May, 2026 08:54am
In one of his most complex and deceptively crafted verses, Mirza Ghalib says that the poet’s pen vibrates with the frequency of...
Published 08 Mar, 2026 10:14am
I have said this before and I repeat: Noon Meem Rashid is not an easy poet to capture in the reader’s cognitive...
Updated 21 Dec, 2025 11:15am
The glorious third sultan of the Ghaznavid dynasty Mahmud (r. 998-1030), who had conquered a vast territory from the Oxus
Published 31 Aug, 2025 08:54am
More than once, and in ways more than one, Ghalib has spoken of what may be called the paradox of manifestation (nazzaara/jalva).
Published 29 Jun, 2025 11:29am
At a first glance, one feels jitters going through the spine to note the title Ghalib gave to his 1857-1858 diary of that fateful
Published 23 Feb, 2025 09:34am
The history of that treacherous and devastating Indian insurrection of 1857 carved in South Asian Muslim memory as...
Published 22 Dec, 2024 10:19am
In the early years of post-Iqbal history of Urdu poetry, one finds two distinct streams flowing alongside each other — the two...
Published 18 Aug, 2024 10:01am
Like Ghalib and Faiz before him, Sarmad Sehbai is a master of visual image construction in Urdu poetry and his new collection is
Updated 14 Jul, 2024 12:26pm
“Truth is, without an unconditional acknowledgement of the poetic virtues of Akhtar Shirani, an honest history of Urdu literature
Published 14 Apr, 2024 07:29am
It is often forgotten that, in a social setting, we generally live under the tall shadows of constructed realities. But to say...
Published 11 Feb, 2024 09:22am
We don’t have a decent edition of this glowing text — and this despite the fact that we have the observation of the famous
Updated 10 Dec, 2023 10:04pm
One of the towering giants in the rich domain of the Karbala elegiac art of marsiya, Mirza Salamat Ali Dabir, had at one place...
Published 06 Aug, 2023 08:54am
While we find a colossus of contra-Muslim literature in the mediaeval Latin West on the one hand, there is also to be found pro...
Updated 04 Jun, 2023 02:24pm
The urs [death anniversary] of the sonorous Sufi poet of the 18th-19th century, Sachal Sarmast, starts in just a few...
Published 02 Apr, 2023 08:20am
Experts tell us there are at least 200 versions of the text in more than 50 languages. However, standard accounts of the fable’...
Updated 30 Jan, 2023 10:03am
This is Mir Taqi Mir, invoking the candle and moth symbolism — something ubiquitous in classical Urdu poetry. Indeed, it is found
Published 27 Nov, 2022 06:23am
What makes Kazmi unique is the dignity and the ever-so-soft aesthetic embodiment he gives to his pain.
Published 25 Sep, 2022 11:53am
I have written more than once about a fascinating, deeply meaningful and yet, at first glance, somewhat odd beseeching of a very
Published 01 May, 2022 10:01am
