Ghanimat Kunjahi

Muhammad Akram Ghanimat Kunjahi (b. Kunjah, d. c. 1695 CE) was a Persian poet in The Mughal Empire. He belongs to the Banu Hashim family. One of his ancestors was Ali's son Imam Abu al-Qasim Muhammad bin Hanffiyah (Alvi.Hashmi), but he used the Kunjahi name in the first half of the seventeenth century CE.[1]

Life

Most of Kunjahi's life was spent in and around his native village. He traveled to, and stayed in, Kashmir, Delhi and Lahore. He was an adherent of the Ḳādiriyya, a Sufi order.[1]

Works

Kunjahi wrote in Persian, in the style known as sabk-i hindī, the so-called 'Indian style'. This style was characterised by an enthusiasm for the ghazal form; an increased interest in realistic images, often in erotic themes; conceptual complexity of images and themes; and complex syntax.[2] 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'.[1]

Kunjahi's diwan is dominated by ghazals, including a poem of praise, Aurangzeb,[3] along with the Nayrang-i ʿishḳ ('Talisman of Love'), from 1681 CE. This is a sentimental, sensuous romantic poem in mathnawī form , set in the India of Kunjahi's day, characterized by 'mystical and symbolical overtones'.[1]

Reception

The Nayrang-i ʿishḳ was translated into Pashto around 1600 by ʿAbd al-Hamīd Mohmand.[4]

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 mental faculties, curing insanity and helping aspiring poets.[5][6]

Kunjahi gave his name to the Bazm-i-Ghanimat, a Pakistani literary organization.[7] By his own request, the Pakistani poet Shareef Kunjahi (1914–2007) was interred in the compound of Kunjahi's mazar in Kunjah.[8]

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 Lewisohn, L.; Morgan, D. (eds.). Late Classical Persianate Sufism. Oxford: Oneworld. pp. 435–63.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • 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)
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References
  1. "Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition - Brill Reference". referenceworks.brillonline.com. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  2. de Bruijn, J.T.P. "Sabk-i, Hindī". Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition - Brill Reference. referenceworks.brillonline.com. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  3. Schimmel, Annemarie. Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. BRILL. p. 103. ISBN 90-04-06117-7.
  4. Da Hamīd Nayrang-i ‘ishq, ed. by Siddīq Allāh Rishtīn (Kabul, 1970).
  5. Shackle 1999, p. 435.
  6. Lewisohn, Leonard (1999). The Heritage of Sufism: Late classical Persianate Sufism (1501-1750). Oneworld. ISBN 978-1-85168-193-8.}}
  7. Arif, Iftikhar; Khwaja, Waqas (2010). Modern Poetry of Pakistan. Dalkey Archive Press. p. 288. ISBN 978-1-56478-605-0.
  8. Sharif Kunjahi laid to rest. Dawn (newspaper). 22 January 2007.
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