Youth Awareness

{December 13, 2010}   URDU NOHAY AND MARSIYA

Urdu Marsiya and Nohay, a historical perspective.


Urdu marsiay and nohay, or elegies, have not only rendered to the Urdu language literary and poetic beauty, but also a medium of religious, cultural, and intellectual expression. Although some Urdu marsiay and nohay deal with topics other than the seventh-century battle of Karbala, most of them have focused on the events that paved the path to this battle and the agonizing aftermath of this event. In this paper, I will discuss the salient characteristics of the genre of marsiya and the variations of the Karbala theme within this tradition according to changing social, cultural, and political contexts.

In order to comprehend Urdu marsiay and nohay, it is essential to glance briefly at the historical and social milieu that nourished this genre. The tradition of marsiya has its roots in the pre-Islamic Arab and Persian worlds, where human sentiments and pathos were expressed in form of elegiac poetry. This tradition continued after the advent of Islam, with many companions of the Prophet Muhammad, such as Umar, arranging for elegies to be written about their deceased family members. In 680 C.E., on the bank of the river Euphrates, Hussain, a grandson of Muhammad, along with his seventy-one companions, was killed in a deserted place, Karbala, for refusing to pay allegiance to the Ummayad ruler, Yazid. This event became a major theme for the marsia’s and noha’s of the ensuing centuries. As history indicates the first noha was recited by Imam Hussain’s sister, Janab-e-Zainab, and son, Imam Zain-al-Abedin, in the aftermath of Imam Hussain’s martyrdom. There were, however, severe restrictions imposed on such mourning ceremonies since the Ummayad rulers could not afford to foster empathy for the family of the Prophet.

When Shi’ism became the official religion of Iran in the fifteenth century, Safavid rulers such as Shah Tahmasp, patronized poets who wrote about the tragedy of Karbala, and the genre of marsiya, according to Persian scholar Wheeler Thackston, “was particularly cultivated by the Safavids.”The most well-known fifteenth-century Persian marsiya writer was Muhtasham Kashani (d. 1587), whose works consequently became a source of elegy emulation for Iranians as well as Indian poets of ensuing generations.


Farewell, O King of martyrs,
Farewell, O Ruler of both worlds,

Mustafa [the Prophet] mourns for you in Paradise,
like Yaqub mourned in the aftermath of his separation with Yusuf.

The Yaqub-Yusuf motif, which by no means is restricted to marsiya, recurs over and over in this genre since the son of Imam Hussain, Ali Akbar, was supposedly as handsome as the Qu’ranic Yusuf, and since the Imam’s distress after the martyrdom of his son was analogous to Yaqub’s sorrow after his son parted from him. The North Indian marsiya writers used similar motifs and metaphors when the centre of Urdu literature moved to the North after the kingdoms of the Deccan were annexed by the Mughals.

As Mughal power began to wane in the aftermath of the rule of Aurangzeb (1706), other autonomous Muslim powers sprung up in India. The Navabs of Avadh, Twelver Shi’is and patrons of Urdu literature and poetry, provided auspices for the sublimation of the marsiya genre in North India.



who shall be called the candle of the gathering of grandeur.

The fountain of paradise [Salsabil] is in the path of those,
who call him the thirsty martyr of Karbala.

It is a strange occurrence that an enemy of Islam,
battles with Ali and is considered only to be mistaken.
How can I exonerate any person who has mistreated them.

Ghalib, in his marsiay and nohay, not only praised the family of Ali, but expressed loyalty to the family of Muhammad by rebuking their opponents. It is difficult for Ghalib to comprehend how the enemies of the Prophet’s family can be exonerated by Muslims. Ghalib’s criticism could have been aimed at the belief of many Muslims that the judgment of the companions of the Prophet should be left to Allah. Ghalib considered Imam Hussain to be the ideal king; the precepts of loyalty demanded aversion toward any enemy of the king.


For the sake of thirst, he [Hussain] fasted in youth,
For the sake of thirst, he turned away from Zehra’s [Fatima’s] milk,
For the sake of thirst, he never accepted the Euphrates’ favor,
The world remembers the story of his slaying,
and his utterance of `thirst, thirst’ while biting the tongue.

Dabir interpreted the Imam’s thirst as if it were a means to unite the Imam with Allah. It was as though Allah tested his beloved by depriving him of water in the sweltering desert of Karbala. But Imam Hussain was not the only one put to the test of Allah; each and every person on the side of the Imam –from the six month old child, Ali Asghar, to the seventy-one-year-old companion of the Prophet Muhammad, Habib Ibn-e Mazahir– was subjected to the agony of thirst. The mystical imagery of forbearance was utilized by Dabir to make his view of the suffering side of the Imam more fathomable to an audience attuned to mystical poetry.

The marsiay and nohay of Mir Taqi Mir (1722-1810) and Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) are similar to those of Ghalib and Dabir in that they perform their panegyrical function for the martyrs of Karbala; but these poets also wrote marsiay and nohay in which the narration of the Karbala tragedy was saturated with cultural and ceremonial imagery of North India. The North Indian Muslim cultural terminology used by Mir and Sauda includes sehra–the veil of flowers that the groom and the bride wear on their wedding day in India and naig–the demand of the groom’s sister for money before allowing her brother to approach his bride

In addition to the wedding of Karbala, other parts of the Karbala tragedy were painted with Indian colors. Mir Anis’ (1802-1874) description of the women of the Prophet’s household embarking on the journey to Karbala and the protocol that was followed was quite similar to the protocol followed by the begmat (ladies) of Lucknow:

Even if there is a young boy on the roof,
he must get down,
If he is coming this way, he must stop.
No stranger should travel on this road,
For God has made her [Zainab, sister of Hussain]nobler than Mary,
Even the male angels have closed their eyes.

This part of Anis’ marsiya echoes the rigidity with which purdah (veiling) was observed in nineteenth-century Avadh.


their glowing faces brightened the dark desert of Karbala.

Like beads in a rosary, they were all united.

They anxiously waited for their death.

They would desire neither food nor water,
their aim was to offer their heads to Allah.
The young boys pleaded to be the first martyrs,
and the older ones left this decision up to the Imam.
like the sun amidst the stars.

The foregoing verses create images similar to those associated with the Mughal durbars, or the Navabs of Avadh sitting in the Diwan-e-Khas (hall of the private audience) while being praised by their loyal friends and advisers.


The marsiay and nohay of Mir Anis reflect the popular prayers of women of Lucknow. When an unmarried son departs for the battlefront, his mother expresses her desire to see his sehra; when a brother leaves the house, his sister prays that the brother’s wife always has sandal-wood powder in her hair and children in her lap; and when a slave joins his master in the war, the slave’s wife prays for her husband’s death in exchange for his master’s life. The ideals of brother-sister and mother-son love, fertility of a woman, and loyalty to the king, were aspirations of the Muslim culture of North India and were channeled through literary genres like the marsiya.



Oh God, give no parent the sorrow of their child.
May this wealth, even of the enemy, be preserved,
and may any agony, but this, afflict your people.


In the twentieth century, the number of Muslim socio-religious reformers who capitalized on the Indianized version of Karbala to channel their concerns for the society increased. Many twentieth century Urdu marsiay and nohay were given a solid intellectual dimension by the incorporation of issues–the Khilafat movement, India’s independence, and the plight of the Indian Muslims, and so on–into the frame story of Karbala. Among the modern marsiya writers who have appropriated the events surrounding Karbala as the underpinnings of their socio-religious reform ideology are Josh Malihabadi and Vahid Akhtar. Josh Malihabadi (1898-1982), renowned as “Shair-i inqilab,” or the Poet of revolution, used the medium of marsiya as a means to propagate the view that Karbala is not a pathos-laden event of a bygone era, but a prototype for contemporary revolutionary struggles. Josh’s writings during the late 1930’s and the early 1940’s, when nationalist feelings were running high in South Asia, had a momentous impact upon his generation. Josh attempted to galvanize the youth of his day by intertwining their contemporary struggle of liberation from colonization with Hussain’s battle:

cast a glance at this twentieth century,
look at this tumult, chaos, and the earthquake.
From village to village might has assumed the role of truth,
Once again, Human feet are in chains.

By interlacing his marsiay and nohay with metaphors that had nuances of a revolutionary struggle and depicting the `anti-Muslim’ forces as being on a par with the tyranny of Muawiya and Yazid, Josh gave the impression that the state of the Muslim community was imminently threatened by a massive, ideologically-based assault upon everything Islam valued. As far as most Muslims are concerned, Yazid’s rule had been the `Other’ of the true Islamic state for centuries. To identify one’s enemy in terms of Yazid was the ultimate demonization that conjured up the most horrific images of opponents, whether the opponents were the British colonizers and their indigenous collaborators, or the corrupt, hypocritical politicians who were about to replace the British colonizers. Josh is a good example of the colonized intellectual who uses nostalgic paradigms to enable his audience to conceptualize the potential for an ideal society. His marsiay and nohay fit into the Fanonian category of “literature of combat.” As Frantz Fanon has pointed out, the strategies of resistance used by intellectuals like Josh were common in several other colonized cultures:


Vahid Akhtar, Professor of Philosophy at Aligarh Muslim University, has been crucial in keeping the tradition of marsiya dynamic in present-day South Asia. His marsiay and nohay rely on the images, metaphors, and nuances inherited from nineteenth century masters like Anis and Dabir, and on the values invested in this genre by socio-religious reformers like Josh. On the back cover of his recently-published marsiya anthology, for example, is the famous Arabic saying: “Every place is Karbala; every day is Ashura.” By positing a similarity between Hussain’s historic battle and the present day struggle of human kind against renewed forms of Yazidian oppression, Akhtar deflects the interpretation of the martyrs of Karbala as mere insignia of Islamic history; they are instead posed as the sinews for the revival of an ideal Islamic state of being.



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