Tābān’s Magnificence Illuminated in Delhi’s Early Reḳhtah Scene, 1728–1748

Abstract This article examines the productive tensions of delight, memory, and affiliation as they structured early Urdu literary history by presenting the previously unconsidered lineages of poet ʿAbd ul-Ḥayy Tābān (1715–1748). Among notable reḳhtah composers of the 1730s and 1740s, Tābān was a Delhi local who died young but influenced ġhazal-writing over his short career. He wrote simple, idiomatic verse, seeming to pre-empt Delhi’s turn away from poetry that featured īhām (misdirection). However, the sociability of īhām writers greatly informed Tābān’s ġhazal writing abilities, instantiating him within a mid-century constellation of writers such as Maz̤har, Ḥātim, Yaqīn, and Saudā. Modern writings, however, circumvent the most important facet of Tābān’s background: Tābān earned his literary credentials through connections to a popular cohort of street poets and punsters informally known as the firqah-e qabūliyah or the “Qabūliyan Contingent.” The Qabūliyans were a tight confederation of Persian- language īhām writers named for their founder ʿAbd ul-Ġhanī Beg Qabūl (d. 1727), a Kashmiri poet, denizen of Feroz Shah Kotla, and important teacher to Delhi’s poets in the early 1700s, most notably Tābān’s beloved ustād Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥashmat (1696?– 1749). The “Qabūliyan Contingent” included, among others, Qabūl’s son Mīrzā Girāmī Hamadānī (d. 1743) and the tażkirah writer Kishan Chand Iḳhlāṣ (d. 1748 or 1754). Tābān’s emulations, tributes, and chronograms that laud the Qabūliyans when coupled with tażkirah writing from the period contextualize literary values that focused on enjoyment and flexibility, a conception of popular literary sociability that was enthusiastically documented in Persian tażkirahs but regarded with ambivalence by early reḳhtah writers and later Urdu-language historians. Tābān’s words, stylistic generosity, and concern for literary delight when examined from a Qabūliyan stance illuminate a previously unconsidered facet of Delhi’s complex early reḳhtah literary culture.