Agha Ahmad Ali | |
|---|---|
| Born | Aga Ahmed Mazhar Ali Ahmod (1839-12-17)17 December 1839 |
| Died | June 1873(1873-06-00) (aged 33) |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Predecessor | Munshi Mutasim Billah, Khwaja Asadullah Kawkab |
| Successor | Muhammad Ashraf, Abdus Samad Fida |
MaulawiĀghā Aḥmad ʿAlī (Persian:آغا احمد علي,Bengali:আগা আহমদ আলী) was a 19th-centuryBengali academic, historian and scholar of thePersian language. In addition to Persian, he also composed poetry inUrdu. He is seen as one of the greatest Persian scholars of Dhaka,[1] and even Bengal as a whole.[2]
Agha Ahmad Ali's grandfather Agha Abdul Ali was a calligraphist who originated fromIsfahan inIran and settled in the city ofDhaka duringNader 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 theDhaka Nawab family.[3] He developed a personal library of over 2000 books. It is said that he completed allvaluable books in the city of Dhaka some time between 1856 and 1860.[according to whom?]
Ali involved himself in a literary competition withMirza Ghalib, a prominent poet of theIndian subcontinent, after Ghalib criticised Mohammad Hossein ibn-khalaf Tabrizi's Persian dictionaryBurhan-e-Qate.[4] In response, Ali wrote theMuayyid-i-Burhan in 1865 in defence of Tabrizi. In 1867, Ghalib responded to Ali inTegh-i-Tez (Urdu:تیغ تیز, Sharp Blade), a 32-page long Urdu pamphlet rebutting Ali's points and objecting more things from Tabrizi's book. It ended with a sixteen-question long questionnaire answered indirectly byNawab Mustafa Khan Shefta through Shefta's three studentsAltaf Hussain Hali, Sadat Ali Khan and Nawab Ziauddin Ahmad Khan. Ali again replied in challenge to Ghalib, with a booklet calledShamsher-i-Teztar (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 theAhmadiyyah movement). He started to teach Persian at theCalcutta Aliyah Madrasah in 1864 taking the advice ofEdward Byles Cowell, the principal of theSanskrit College. In addition to this, Ali also taught Persian to Cowell as well asHeinrich Blochmann, another leading European orientalist.[6] With a number of students, Ali's most senior disciples were Muhammad Ashraf and Fida Sylheti.[7] Agha Ahmad Ali died of tuberculosis in June 1873, in his early 30s. He was buried in the graveyard near thelangar khana of Mirza Saheb.[citation needed]
Agha Ahmad Ali worked closely withThe Asiatic Society and contributed heavily to theBibliotheca Indica. He wrote a number of commentaries on historical works such as:[8]
Some of his other works included:
