{{Short description|Indian writer and poet (1830 –1910)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2019}} {{Use Indian English|date=January 2019}} {{distinguish|Mohammad Hussain Azad}} {{Infobox person | name = Muhammad Husain Azad | image = | birth_date = 5 May 1830 | birth_place = Delhi, Mughal Empire<br>(now in India) | death_date = 22 January 1910 | death_place = Lahore, British India<br>(now in Punjab, Pakistan) | notable_works = Aab-e-Hayat }}
'''Muhammad Husain Azad''' ({{langx|ur|{{Nastaliq|مُحمّد حُسَین آزاد}}}} — {{Transliteration|ur|''Mọḥammad Ḥusẹ̅n Āzād''}}; 5 May 1830 – 22 January 1910) was an Urdu writer and scholar who wrote both prose and poetry, but is mostly remembered for his prose. His best known work is Aab-e-Hayat ("Elixir of Life").<ref name=UC>{{cite web|url=https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/PK2155.H8413/0001fwp.html |title=Everybody Knows This Much....(profile of Muhammad Husain Azad)|author=Frances W. Pritchett, Columbia University|website=University of Chicago website|accessdate=26 September 2020}}</ref><ref name=UrduAdab>[http://novelsandfictionstories.blogspot.com/2009/07/muhammad-hussain-azad.html Profile of Muhammad Husain Azad on Urdu Adab website] Published 11 July 2009, Retrieved 25 September 2020</ref>
== Early life and family == Muhammad Hussain was born in Delhi to a Persian immigrant family. His mother died when he was four years old. His father, Moulvi Muhammad Baqir was educated at the Delhi College. In early 1837, Azad's father bought a printing press and launched the ''Delhi Urdu Akhbaar'' (Delhi Urdu Newspaper). In 1854, Muhammad Hussain graduated from college and began to help his father with his newspaper and publishing work.<ref name=UC/>
Azad married Aghai Begum, the daughter of another Persian immigrant family. Then his world came apart during the next few years due to his father-owned newspaper's support of the freedom fighters against the British empire and restoration of the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar in Delhi temporarily in the aftermath of Indian Rebellion of 1857. After the British retook Delhi some months later and executed his father Maulvi Muhammad Baqir, his whole joint family including old women and young children were expelled from their house by force by the British authorities. A period of turmoil followed in Delhi, Azad then decided to migrate to Lahore in 1861.<ref name=UrduAdab/><ref name=UC/>
== Career == Azad started teaching at the newly-founded Government College, Lahore in 1864, and later at Oriental College, Lahore. In Lahore, he came in contact with G. W. Leitner, who was the Principal of Government College, Lahore and founder of Anjuman-e-Punjab. In 1866, Azad became a regularly paid lecturer on behalf of the Anjuman and a year later became its secretary. In 1887, he established the Azad Library which helped him earn the title of ''Shams-ul-ulama'' (Sun among the Learned).<ref name=UrduAdab/><ref name=UC/>
Along with Altaf Hussain Hali, Azad led a movement for 'natural poetry', a movement to reform classical Urdu poetry. He declared the aim of poetry to be “as we express it, it should arouse in the listeners’ heart the same effect, the same emotion, the same fervor, as would be created by seeing the thing itself, rejecting the aesthetics of classical Urdu poetry, which, according to him, was artificial and involved in a 'game of words' that did not produce genuine emotion. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan encouraged and supported both Hali and Azad in their effort to create a simple and realistic-looking creed of Urdu literature.<ref name=UC/><ref name="Dubrow2018">{{cite book|last=Dubrow|first=Jennifer|title=Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia|url=https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/523583|date=October 2018|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|isbn=978-0-8248-7270-0|chapter=Chapter 1 : Printing the Cosmopolis|chapter-url=https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9780824876692/9780824876692-005/9780824876692-005.xml|page=23|via=De Gruyter}} {{Subscription required}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/azad-mohammad-hosayn-scholar-and-writer-in-urdu-and-persian-born-about-1834-in-delhi|title=ĀZĀD, MOḤAMMAD-ḤOSAYN – Encyclopaedia Iranica|website=www.iranicaonline.org|access-date=2020-02-10}}</ref>
== Works == * ''Qisas ul-Hind'' ("Stories of India") - 1869<ref name=UrduAdab/><ref name=UC/> * ''Nairang-e Khiyāl'' ("The Wonder-World of Thought") - 1880<ref name=UC/> * Aab-e-Hayat ("Water of Life/Elixir") - 1880 (description of the chronological history of Urdu poetry)<ref name=UrduAdab/><ref name=UC/> * ''Sair-e-Iran'' - 1886 * ''Sukhandān-e Fārs'' ("On Iranian Poets") - completed in 1887 and published in 1907<ref name=UrduAdab/> * ''Darbār-e-Akbarī'' ("The Court of Akbar") - 1898<ref name=UrduAdab/><ref name=UC/>
==Death== Muhammad Hussain Azad died in Lahore on 22 January 1910 at age 79.<ref name=UC/>
==References== {{reflist}}
== External links == * [https://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/dig_toc.html?BOOKID=PK2167.A84 Table of Contents -- Digital South Asia Library<!-- bot-generated title -->] at dsal.uchicago.edu Aab-eHayat link to 1907 edition printed Naval Kishore Press, Lahore. * [https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/PK2155.H8413/index.html <!-- bot-generated title -->] at dsal.uchicago.edu Aab-eHayat link to English Translation, Translated and edited by Frances W. Pritchett, in association with Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Azad, Muhammad Husain}} Category:19th-century Indian Muslims Category:Muslim reformers Category:Poets from Delhi Category:1830 births Category:1910 deaths Category:Urdu-language Indian poets Category:Scholars from British India Category:Muslim writers Category:Writers from Lahore Category:Indian literary critics Category:Academic staff of the Government College University, Lahore Category:19th-century Indian poets Category:20th-century Indian poets Category:Indian travel writers Category:Indian expatriates in Iran Category:Urdu-language travel writers Category:Academic staff of the Oriental College, Lahore Category:Zakir Husain Delhi College alumni