Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī

(2,748 words)

Abū l-Ḥasan Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī (651–725/1253–1325)

was the greatest Indo-Persian poet of the sultanate period. Article Table of Contents
He is better known today for his devotion to his Chishtī Ṣūfī
Life
master, Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ (d. 725/1325). His sobriquet
Tūtī-i Hind (“Parrot of India”), comparing the eloquent poet Poetry
to the sweet-talking parrot, indicates his canonical status as Bibliography
a poet of Persian. He was primarily a court poet, whose
Persian poetry was read in every part of the Persianate
world, and a small corpus of it, as well as verses attributed to him in the vernacular language
Hindavi, are part of the oral repertoire of qavvālī, a devotional form of poetry that developed in
India and is performed chie y at Ṣūfī shrines. Khusraw’s works “provide the fullest single
expression extant of medieval Indo-Muslim civilisation” (Hardy), and he played a central role in
conferring a distinct identity on Indo-Persian literature and on the practice of Indian Islam.

Life

Khusraw’s father, Sayf al-Dīn Maḥmūd (d. 658/1260), of the Turkic Hazāra-yi Lāchīn clan of
Transoxiana, had arrived in India during the reign of Sulṭān Shams al-Dīn Iltutmish (r. 607–
33/1211–36). His mother was the daughter of ʿImād al-Mulk (d. 671/1273), who was an Indian
convert to Islam. Both men were in imperial service. According to later biographers, Khusraw
was born in Patiyali, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, and spent most of his life in the capital, Delhi,
hence his nisba Dihlavī. For his ancestral origin, he is known in present-day Afghanistan also as
Khusraw-i Balkhī. After the death of his father, Khusraw was raised in the home of his maternal
grandfather, where he studied calligraphy, Arabic, and Persian masters such as Sanāʾī (d.
525/1131), Anwarī (d. c.585–7/1189–91), and Khāqānī (d. 595/1199), whom he emulated in his own
poetry. He displayed a talent for poetry as a child and at a young age began service as a
professional poet with the family of Sulṭān Balban (r. 664–86/1266–87). His rst patron was ʿAlāʾ
al-Dīn Kishlū Khān, nephew of the sultan. Two years later, he joined the entourage of the sultan’s
son Nāṣir al Dīn Bughrā Khān in Sāmāna (in Panjāb) and then Lakhnawtī (in Bengal); soon
son Nāṣir al-Dīn Bughrā Khān in Sāmāna (in Panjāb) and then Lakhnawtī (in Bengal); soon
afterwards, he accompanied the sultan’s eldest son, Muḥammad Qaʾān Malik, to Multān. Five
years later (683/1284) the prince was killed in a Mongol raid on Multān, and Khusraw was held
captive for a day before he escaped. Having returned to Delhi, Khusraw next served under the
powerful nobleman Malik ʿAlī Sarjāndār Ḥātim Khān in Delhi and then, brie y, in Awadh, when
his patron was governor of the province. Khusraw returned to the capital in 688/1289 and was
subsequently attached to the Delhi court under the sultans Jalāl al-Dīn Khaljī (r. 689–95/1290–6),
ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī (r. 695–715/1296–1315), Quṭb al-Dīn Mubārakshāh (r. 716–20/1316–20), Ghiyāth
al-Dīn Tughluq (r. 720–5/1320–4), and, brie y, Muḥammad Tughluq (r. 725–52/1324–51).

One of the most signi cant events in Khusraw’s life was his meeting, as a young man, with
Nizām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ. He maintained a lifelong connection with him and the Chishtī khānqāh
(Ṣūfī lodge) in Ghiyaspur until his death, which occurred a few months after that of the master.
The two are buried close to one another in the Nizamuddin (Nizām al-Dīn) shrine complex in
New Delhi. Many of his works bear dedications to both the temporal ruler and the Ṣūfī pīr
(spiritual master). The most famous of Khusraw’s contemporaries was the poet Ḥasan Sijzī (d.
c.736/1336), who recorded the malfūẓāt of Niẓām al-Dīn in Persian, Fawāʾid al-fuʾād (“Morals of
the heart”). The earliest biographical account of Khusraw is found soon after his death, in Amīr
Khurd’s (d. 770/1368–9) Siyar al-awliyāʾ (“Biographies of the friends (of God)”) and, as he and
Ḥasan were absorbed into the hagiographic traditions around Niẓām al-Dīn, numerous stories
involving them appeared in the tadhkira (lit., biography, in fact, hagiography) literature.

Poetry
Khusraw enjoyed immense popularity in Delhi during the Khaljī period. He was given the title
amīr by Sulṭān Jalāl al-Dīn. As a professional court poet, Khusraw composed qasīdas (eulogies)
and tarjīʿbands (stanzaic poems with a recurrent linking verse) to commemorate the victories of
his patrons, on the Persian New Year (Nawrūz) and on the occasion of other Islamic festivals at
court, as well as panegyrics on the prophet Muḥammad and elegies for various individuals. He
used all the Persian poetic forms available to him for panegyric verse. His ghazals are chie y love
poems and not overtly mystical. They were sung in courtly and non-courtly settings, both for
entertainment and in Ṣūfī samāʿ (spiritual concert) sessions. A few form the core of the modern
qavvālī repertoire. Khusraw had a great in uence on later generations of Persian ghazal poets,
especially in the Tīmūrid and Ṣafavid-Mughal periods. The poet divided his shorter poems in the
form of ve dīvāns that were compiled at various times in his life: (1) Tuḥfat al-ṣighār (“Gift of
youth”), poems of his youth, compiled around 671/1273; (2) Wasaṭ al-ḥayāt (“Middle of life”),
poems of middle life, collected around 683/1284; (3) Ghurrat al-kamāl (“New moon of
perfection”), poems of maturity, collected around 693/1294; (4) Baqiyya naqiyya (“Miscellanea”),
collected around 716/1316; and (5) Nihāyat al-kamāl (“Extremity of perfection”), collected in
725/1325. Four of these include introductions by the author himself, with the introduction to the
second dīvān being a major literary work in itself, in the form of a treatise on poetics and
autobiography. The Tīmūrid Ṣūfī poet and hagiographer ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) from
Herat followed Khusraw in dividing his poetic oeuvre into several dīvāns with introductions.

Khusraw was the rst poet to compose a quintet (khamsa) of narrative poems (mathnavī) in
response to the one by the master poet Niẓāmī of Ganja (d. 606/1209), whose works were
immensely popular. Khusraw composed the khamsa as a way both to pay homage to Niẓāmī and
to create literature that took its inspiration from and had relevance to his own cultural milieu in
India. He sought to give a distinct avour to his narrative poetry and thus drew on the rich lore
of Indian literary and folk traditions of storytelling. He wrote his quintet quickly between the
years 697/1298 and 701/1302, in contrast to Niẓāmī, who laboured over his poems for years at a
time. The poems are all in the same metres as Niẓāmī’s works, and some titles are changed
slightly, so as to be reminiscent of, yet distinguishable from, the original ones. Each poem is
dedicated to Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyāʾ and Sulṭān ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī. Modern critics have often
compared the two quintets, but Niẓāmī and Khusraw were very di ferent stylistically. Khusraw’s
khamsa was read and imitated by later poets as often as Niẓāmī’s work, most famously by Jāmī,
Navāʾī (d. 906/1501), Jamālī (d. 942/1536), and Maktabī (d. 895/1489–90), and, because of the rich
content of its stories, was often illustrated sumptuously. After Niẓāmī’s quintet and Firdawsī (d.
411/1020)’s Shāh-nāma, it was the most frequently illustrated literary work (Brend, xxiii).

The ve poems in Khusraw’s khamsa are: 1) Maṭlaʿ al-anwār (“Rising place of lights”), a collection
of twenty didactic tales featuring gures from Islamic lore (such as Musā, Khiḍr, Shiblī, and ʿIsā)
and two animal fables. 2) Shīrīn-u Khusraw, the saga of the love of the Sāsānid king Khusraw
Parvīz for Shīrīn. In this work, unlike in that by Niẓāmī, the focus is not on kingship and his
women characters are not particularly strong or remarkable, but there are several distinctive
features, especially the depiction of the sculptor Farhād who loves Shīrīn. 3) Majnūn-u Laylā,
considered the nest work of the khamsa, with a plot modi ed considerably by Khusraw. 4)
Āʾīna-yi Iskandarī (“Alexandrine mirror”), a description of the adventures of Iskandar, who is
depicted here as an adventurer and scientist rather than as a prophet and philosopher. 5) Hasht
bihisht (“The eight Paradises”) is a collection of stories told to the Iranian Sāsānid king Bahrām
Gūr (r. 420–38 C.E.) on seven consecutive days of the week by seven princesses, each
representing one of the seven climes of the world (Indian, Nīmrūzī, Slavic, Tatar, Rūmī, Arabian,
and Khvarāzmian), each associated with one of the seven planets and dressed in clothing of a
di ferent colour and residing in a palace of a di ferent colour (black, sa fron, green, red, violet,
sandalwood, and white). Only the last two works of the quintet have been translated into
European languages.

Khusraw’s narrative poems in mathnavī form on courtly and political events have been used by
historians to supplement information found in chronicles. These works were meant to be literary
narratives rather than strictly historical sources, so their language is rhetorical and poetic. These
poems have not been studied extensively by literary scholars. The ve historical poems, although
poems have not been studied extensively by literary scholars. The ve historical poems, although
not referred to as a quintet, are usually grouped together: 1) Qirān al-saʿdayn (“Conjunction of
two auspicious stars”), completed in 688/1289 to commemorate the reunion of Sulṭān Muʿizz al-
Dīn Kayqubād (r. 686–9/1287–90) and his father Nāṣir al-Dīn Bughrā Khān (independent sultan
of Bengal, r. 686/1287–690/1291) on the banks of the river Sarju in Awadh. This poem includes
often quoted sections on the architecture of Delhi, and the famous poem on the beautiful young
boys of the city. 2) Miftāḥ al-futūḥ (“Key to victories”), completed in 690/1291, describes the four
victories of Sulṭān Jalāl al-Dīn Khaljī. Much shorter than the others, it formed part of the dīvān
Ghurrat al-kamāl. 3) Duval Rānī Khiḍr Khān (or ʿAshīqa) (“Love Story of Duval Rānī and Khiḍr
Khān”) completed in 715/1316, was on the tragic love story of Khiḍr Khān, son of Sulṭān ʿAlāʾ al-
Dīn Khaljī, and Devaldeʾī, the daughter of the Hindu Rāja Karan of Nahrwala (Anhilwara), in
Gujarat. This work was popular in later centuries and was illustrated several times across the
Persianate world. 4) Nuh sipihr (“The nine heavens”), completed in 718/1328, describes various
aspects of Sulṭān Quṭb al-Dīn Mubārak Shāh Khaljī’s reign. This work is Khusraw’s paean to India
and its rightful claim to be the home of Muslim culture. It is encyclopaedic in its record of the
diversity of the country’s languages, geography, ora and fauna, musical instruments, Hindu
religious practices, and other topics. 5) Tughluq-nāma (“The book of Tughluq”) describes the
victory in 720/1320 of Sulṭān Ghiyāth al-Dīn Tughluq over the usurper Khusraw Khān, who died
in the same year. Sections of this work had already been lost in Mughal times, and the poet
Hayātī Gīlānī (d. 1028/1618) was commissioned to restore them.

Khusraw also composed two prose works, Khazāʾin al-futūḥ (“Treasures of victories,” 711/1311),
also known as Taʾrīkh-i ʿalāʾī (“Outstanding history”), on Sulṭān ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī’s military
campaigns, and the Iʿjāz-i Khusravī (“Khusraw’s miracle,” compiled in 710/1310), a massive
collection of epistolographic and other miscellaneous writings. Other works that have been
attributed to him—such as Afẓal al-fawāʾid (“Most excellent morals”), a small collection of the
sayings of Niẓām al-Dīn, Khāliq bārī (“Inventor”), a Persian-Hindavi dictionary, and Bāgh-u
bahār, a prose narrative mixed with elements of romance and adventure from Indian and Perso-
Islamic storytelling traditions in prose—were not written by him.

Khusraw is credited with playing an important role in the creation of Hindustani music by
bringing together elements of Persian and Indian musical traditions. He is said to have invented
certain ragas (melodic modes of classical music) and instruments such as the Indian sitar and
tabla. No text on a musical topic written by him is extant, but there is ample evidence in his
works of an expert’s knowledge of music.

The Hindavi poems attributed to Khusraw have come down chie y in an oral tradition; the
earliest specimens were not recorded until the twelfth/eighteenth century, when Urdu literary
culture began to eclipse Persian in India. Due to Khusraw’s importance as a major cultural icon,
spurious verses in various registers of the Hindi-Urdu linguistic spectrum have been attributed
to him in the modern period.
In the twenty- rst century there has been a revival of Khusraw’s legacy in various aspects of
South Asian cultures. The most prominent of these is in the eld of qavvalī music that has gone
beyond a purely Ṣūfī ritual and is now a major form of entertainment. Although Khusraw’s
Persian works are not widely known or read, there is renewed attention to his role in the
creation of a Hindustani culture that combines Indic and Islamic cultural practices. The Jahan-e-
Khusrau, organised by Muza far Ali, and the Jashn-e-Khusrau, hosted by the Aga Khan Trust for
Culture, both in New Delhi, are examples of recent cultural festivals that have taken Khusraw as
the inspiration to explore various aspects of South Asian Ṣūfī musical traditions.

Sunil Sharma

Bibliography

Published editions of Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī works

Āʾīna-yi Sikandarī, ed. Muḥammad Saʿīd Aḥmad Fārūqī, Aligarh 1917, ed. J. Mirsaidov, Moscow
1977

Dībācha-yi dīvān-i ghurrat al-kamāl, ed. Vazīr al-Ḥasan ʿĀbidī, Islamabad and Lahore 1975

Dīvān-i Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī, ed. Iqbāl Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Tehran 1387sh/2008

Duwalrānī Khiḍr Khān, ed. Rashīd Aḥmad Salīm, Aligarh 1917, ed. Khāliq Aḥmad Niẓāmī, Delhi
1988

Hasht bihisht, ed. Muḥammad Sulaymān Ashraf, Aligarh 1918, ed. Jaʿfar Iftikhār, Moscow 1972

Iʿjāz-i Khusravī, Lucknow 1876

Khamsa, Tehran 1983 (repr. of Moscow editions without critical apparatus)

Khazāʾin al-futūḥ, ed. Mūʿīn al-Ḥaq Ḥabīb, Aligarh 1927, ed. Muḥammad Vāḥid Mīrzā, Calcutta
1953

Kulliyyāt-i ghazaliyyāt-i Khusraw, ed. Iqbāl Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, 4 vols., Lahore 1972–5

Kulliyyāt-i qasāʾid-i Khusraw, ed. Iqbāl Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Lahore 1977

Maṭlaʿ al-anwār, ed. Muḥammad Muqtadā Khān, Aligarh 1926, ed. T. A. Muharramov, Moscow
1975

Majnūn-u Laylā, ed. Ḥasrat Shirvānī, Aligarh 1917, ed. G. A. Mahramov, Moscow 1964
Miftāḥ al-futūḥ, ed. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rashīd, Aligarh 1954

Nuh sipihr, ed. Vāḥid Mīrzā, London 1950

Qirān al-saʿdayn, ed. Mawlawī Muḥammad Ismāʿīl, Aligarh 1918, ed. Aḥmad Ḥasan Qārī,
Islamabad 1976

Shīrīn-u Khusraw, ed. ʿAlī Aḥmad Khān Asīr, Aligarh 1927, ed. G. Alijef, Moscow 1961

Tughluq-nāma, ed. Sayyid Hāshimi Farīdābādī, Awrangabad 1933.

Studies

Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman, Amir Khusrau as a genius, Delhi 1982

Sabahuddin Abdur Rahman (ed.), Amir Khusrau. Critical studies, Islamabad 1975

Sabahuddin Abdurrahman, Amir Khusrau. Memorial volume, New Delhi 1975

Zoe Ansari (ed.), Life, times & works of Amīr Khusrau Dehlavī, New Delhi 1975

Syed Hasan Askari, Amir Khusrau as a historian, Patna 1988

Michael B. Bednar, The content and the form in Amīr Khusraw’s Duval Rānī va Khiẓr Khān, JRAS,
ser. 3, 24/1 (2013), 1–19

Barbara Brend, Perspectives on Persian painting. Illustrations to Amīr Khusrau’s Khamsah, London
2003

Alyssa Gabbay, Islamic tolerance. Amīr Khusraw and pluralism, Milton Park, UK 2010

Mohammad Habib, Hazrat Amir Khusro of Delhi, Bombay 1927

Peter Hardy, Amīr Khusraw, EI2

Ḥasan Sijzī, Nizam Ad-Din Awliya. Morals for the heart, trans. Bruce B. Lawrence, New York 1992

Mumtaz Husain, Amir Khusrav Dehlavi, Karachi 1986

Mumtaz Husain, Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī. Ḥayāt awr shāʿirī, Islamabad 1975

Paul E. Losensky and Sunil Sharma (trans.), In the bazaar of love. The selected poetry of Amir
Khusrau, New Delhi 2011
Meraj Ahmed Nizami, Surūd-i rūḥānī qavvālī ke rang, Delhi 1998

Mohammad Wahid Mirza, Life and works of Amir Khusrau, Lahore 1962, repr. Delhi 1974

Gopichand Narang, Amīr Khusraw kā hindavī kalām, maʿ nuskha-yi Barlin zakhīra-yi Ishprangar,
Chicago 1987

Ram Nath and Faiyaz Gwaliari (trans.), India as seen by Amir Khusrau (in 1318 A.D.), Jaipur 1981

Shiblī Nuʿmānī, Amīr Khusraw, Shʿir al-ʿajam (Azamgarh 1988), 3:96–189

Paramānand Pānchāl, Bhārat kī mahān vibhūti Amīr Khusro. Vyaktitva awr krititva, New Delhi
2001

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, Su music of India and Pakistan. Sound, context, and meaning in
qawwali, Chicago 19952

S. Ghulam Samnani, Amir Khusrau, New Delhi 1968

Shahab Sarmadee, Amīr Khusrau’s prose writings on music in Rasāʾil’ul Ijāz better known as Ijāz-i
Khusrawī (risāla 2, khatt 9, ḥarf 3), ed. Prem Lata Sharma and Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye, Kolkata
2004

Annemarie Schimmel, Amīr Kosrow Dehlavī, EIr

John Seyller, Pearls of the Parrot of India. The Walters Art Museum Khamsa of Amīr Khusraw of
Delhi, Baltimore 2001

Sunil Sharma, Amir Khusraw and the genre of historical narratives in verse, Comparative Studies
of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 22/1–2 (2003), 112–8

Sunil Sharma, Amir Khusraw. The poet of Su s and sultans, Oxford 2005

Sunil Sharma, Ḵamsa-ye Amir Ḵosrow, EIr

Charles A. Storey, Persian literature. A bio-bibliographical survey (London 1972), 1/2:495–505.

Cite this page

Sharma, Sunil, “Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett
Rowson. Consulted online on 02 June 2020 <http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_23805>
First published online: 2017
First print edition: 9789004335721, 2017, 2017-3