The Urdu Ghazal Podcast, Episode 18 -- Shahryar (1936-2012)

Poet Shahryar was born in 1936 in a small town near Bareilly, and early in his life, he came under the influence of Khaleelur Rehman Azmi, a prominent Urdu critic and poet. He joined the Aligarh Muslim University, where he earned his doctoral degree. Shahryar started his career at the Anjuman Taraqqqi-e Urdu,  where Professor Ale Ahmad Suroor was the President. Later, he moved to the Department of Urdu at AMU and taught there until his retirement in 1996. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for one of his poetry collections in 1987. In 2008, he became the fourth Urdu writer to receive the prestigious Jnanpith Award after Firaq Gorakhpuri, Ali Sardar Jafri, and Qurratulain Hyder. Earlier,  he had earned fame as a lyricist for his ghazals in Muzaffar Ali’s films like Gaman and Umrao Jaan. He wrote both short poems and ghazals, but it was due to his ghazals that he earned his fame. He died at the age of 76 due to cancer in 2012.  

For more about Urdu Ghazal Poetry, please refer to:

Gopi Chand Narang, Translation by Surinder Deol. The Urdu Ghazal: A Gift of Composite Culture. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2020.