Ghanimat Kunjahi
Muhammad Akram Ghanimat Kunjahi (b. Kunjah, now in Pakistan, in the first half of the seventeenth century CE, d. Kunjah c. 1695 CE), was a poet in Mughal India.[1]
Life
Most of Kunjahi's life was spent in and around his native village. However, he is also known to have stayed in Kashmir, Delhi, and Lahore. He was an adherent of the Ḳādiriyya, a Sufi order.[2]
Works
Kunjahi wrote in Persian, in the style known as sabk-i hindī, the so-called 'Indian style', which was characterised by an enthusiasm for the ghazal form; an increased interest in realistic images, often on erotic themes; increased conceptual complexity and intellectual complexity of images and themes; and complex syntax.[3] It has been suggested that Kunjahi's 'fondness for lengthy compound expressions echoes the enormous compound epithets of Sanskrit poetry of the Kāvya style, especially as Ghanīmat’s century was one of considerable Muslim-Hindu cultural interaction, in which, for instance, several Sanskrit works were translated into Persian at the Mughal court'.[4]
Kunjahi's Dīwān is dominated by ghazals, including a praise poem of Aurangzeb,[5] along with the Nayrang-i ʿishḳ ('Talisman of Love'), from 1681 CE. This is a sentimental, sensuous romance in mathnawī form poem, set in the India of Kunjahi's own day, characterised by 'mystical and symbolical overtones'.[6]
Reception
The Nayrang-i ʿishḳ was translated into Pashto arund 1600 by ʿAbd al-Hamīd Mohmand.[7]
By the mid-twentieth century, Kunjahi had 'come to maintain a dim afterlife in popular local memory only as a miracle worker with some notable but minor specialist powers of the kind attributed to the lesser sort of departed Sufi saint all over the Muslim world'. His tomb was associated with improving metal faculties, curing insanity, and helping aspiring poets.[8]
Kunjahi gave his name to the Bazm-i-Ghanimat, a Pakistani literary organisation.[9] By his own request, the Pakistani poet Shareef Kunjahi (1914–2007) was interred in the compound of Ghanimat Kunjahi's mazar in Kunjah.[10]
Key studies
- A. Bausani, 'Indian Elements in the Indo-Persian Poetry: The Style of Ganimat Kunǧāhī', in Orientalia hispanica sive studia F.M. Pareja octogenario dicata, ed. by J.M. Barral, Arabica-Islamica, 1 (Leiden 1974), pp. 105-19.
- Shackle, Christopher (1999) 'Persian Poetry and Qadiri Sufism in late Mughal India: Ghanimat Kunjahi and his mathnawi Nayrang-i Ishq', in Late Classical Persianate Sufism, ed. by L. Lewisohn and D. Morgan (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), pp. 435-63, https://www.scribd.com/document/84085105/Christopher-Shackle-Persian-Poetry-Nayrang-i-Ishq
- Arun Singh, Black Light: Islamic Philosophical Themes from the Nayrang-e ‘Ishq (London: Buzurg Omid, 2013)n: Lewisohn, Leonard, (ed.), The Heritage of Sufism: III. Late Classical Persianate Sufism (1501 - 1750). Oxford: Oneworld Publications, pp. 435-463.
Editions
- Dīwān, ed. Ghulām Rabbānī ʿAzīz (Lahore 1958)
- Nayrang-i ʿishk, ed. Ghulām Rabbānī ʿAzīz (Lahore: Panjabi Adabi Akademi, 1962)
References
- ↑ “Ghanīmat Kundjāhī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1954-2009), DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8560.
- ↑ “Ghanīmat Kundjāhī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1954-2009), DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8560.
- ↑ J.T.P. de Bruijn, “Sabk-i, Hindī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1954-2009), DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6377.
- ↑ “Ghanīmat Kundjāhī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1954-2009), DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8560, citing A. Bausani, 'Indian Elements in the Indo-Persian Poetry: The Style of Ganimat Kunǧāhī', in Orientalia hispanica sive studia F.M. Pareja octogenario dicata, ed. by J.M. Barral, Arabica-Islamica, 1 (Leiden 1974), pp. 105-19.
- ↑ Annemarie Schimmel, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (Leiden: Brill, 1980), p. 103.
- ↑ “Ghanīmat Kundjāhī”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1954-2009), DOI:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_8560.
- ↑ Da Hamīd Nayrang-i ‘ishq, ed. by Siddīq Allāh Rishtīn (Kabul, 1970).
- ↑ in Late Classical Persianate Sufism, ed. by L. Lewisohn and D. Morgan (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), pp. 435-63 (p. 435), https://www.scribd.com/document/84085105/Christopher-Shackle-Persian-Poetry-Nayrang-i-Ishq.
- ↑ Modern Poetry of Pakistan, ed. by Iftikhar Arif and Waqas Khwaja (Champaign: Dalkey, 2010), 288.
- ↑ Sharif Kunjahi laid to rest. Dawn (newspaper). 22 January 2007.