ABSTRACT
Urdu is generally believed to mean ‘camp’ in Turkish and the language of Delhi soldiers. New research says it began in Gujarat, went to the Deccan and came to Delhi. Its first poet is Amir Khusro, a Sufi. The Sufis used oral transmission of knowledge between master and pupil. Hence intimacy grew between the two men. In fact, so close was Khusro to his master Nizamuddin, that he died a mere year after his master’s death. Another Urdu poet, Mir Taki Mir, wrote poems to a fairy from the moon! Firaq is in this old romantic tradition. Following him were the Deccan poets Shaaz Tamkanait and Suleiman Arib, who wrote the occasional gay lyric. Gay readers would like to know that Urdu’s first poet (twelfth century Delhi), Amir Khusro, was a gay man. He was Turkish but his mother was Indian. He invented the Urdu ghazal, wrote tens of thousands of them and was called Tut-e-Hindi, the Songbird of India.
