When Nakhuda Mohammed Ali Rogay died, aged 76, on April 30, 1850, at his seafront residence in Chowpatty, Mumbai, it signified the end of an epoch.
Rogay, perhaps the most prominent opium trader of his time, survived over five decades in the notoriously fickle Bombay Country Trade between India and China. Mourned universally in Mumbai, Rogay’s life would have been commemorated by Mumbai poets with a chronogram or qata’ tarikh vafat. This was a phrase or word woven into a Persian or Urdu poem which would not only yield the year of death in the Hijri calendar according to the abjad convention of numerology but also describe, in a direct or indirect manner, some aspect of the subject’s personality or convey a sense of loss.
The only chronogram of commemorating Nakhuda Rogay that I have encountered was composed by the Sheikh Mohammad who wrote under the takhallus or pen-name, Manzoor.
It runs as follows:
گل ھوا چراغ
gul hua chirag
[the lamp is extinguished]
The chronogram composed by Manzoor, which signified the Hijri year 1266, was prophetic enough to predict the complete erasure from public memory of Mohammed Ali Rogay. It also presaged the precipitous collapse of the Bombay Country Trade in the 1850s with its sailing ships being repurposed to carry human cargo – indentured labour to Mauritius – instead of opium to China.
Endings
Manzoor was no stranger to the ending of eras. A native of Surat and the son of a maritime trader whose ancestors were from Arabia, Manzoor would have personally witnessed the final years of Surat conceding its status as an international trading hub to Mumbai. In his autobiography, Manzoor recalls how his father’s career ended.
“My most respected father, Sheikh Abdullah, was a seafarer who carried goods worth thousands of rupees on behalf of other traders, including my maternal uncle, Sheikh Ali Bildrum. He would go by ship, sometimes to Jeddah, at other times to Bengal or Basra, and often to the port city of Muscat; or to islands like Achin [Aceh] and Ceylon [Sri Lanka], and Siam [Thailand]. At every port of call, he would buy and sell goods before returning to Surat. From the profits of the voyage, he would retain six annas in the rupee as recompense for his troubles. The rest would be distributed to his clients in proportion to their investment along with any trade goods they might have ordered…My father had to face a lot of troubles on his last voyage. He returned to Surat over three years after he had embarked on the voyage as he had to face typhoons and other difficulties. He gave up seafaring and maritime trade after this voyage and proceeded to settle down in the city of Baroda.”
The trade, which lasted until the early 1800s, must have been profitable. Born in Hijri 1237 (1821/22), Manzoor recalls being gifted an Ethiopian or habshi slave by his father when he returned from one of his voyages. But international maritime trade was no longer an option for a young man from Surat in the 1830s. He had to find a more modest livelihood, but trade he would.
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Mumbai had now become the maritime emporium of western India and all trade was centred in it. Manzoor managed to find a little niche in this land of opportunities, as he describes in his autobiography.
“[After my father’s death], my domestic responsibilities increased and I had to seek a livelihood. On the advice of the famous trader, Sheikh Ahmed, I began going to Bambai to purchase a variety of trade goods. On my return to Surat, I would first present a choice selection in the august presence of the ruler of Sachin, Nawab Abdul Karim Ibrahim Yaqut Khan Mubarizzudowla Nusrat Jung Bahadur [reigned 1802–1853], may Allah preserve him. In a spirit of charity, he would buy the entire lot. He would purchase these goods at any price that he fancied and immediately pay the requisite amount to me. I would then come to Surat with the goods that were left over and try to sell them through commission agents. Whatever they could not sell would be sent to Baroda to my dear esteemed brother, Sheikh Omar, son of Sheikh Ali Bildrum. In this manner, I earned a little money.”
Manzoor shuttled between Surat and Mumbai for many years, mostly by sea, but sometimes by the arduous land route. His product selections may have consisted of luxury and exotic goods which had the potential of capturing the fancy of his rich clients, mainly the rulers of the many small fiefdoms around Surat. They could be newfangled technology such as clocks, mechanical toys and singing bird boxes, or more traditional goods like luxury fabrics and jewellery.
Surat, as illustrated on James James Forbes’ ‘Oriental Memoirs.’ Photo: The British Library Board
However, even the uppermost echelon of society in south Gujarat was imperilled in the 1840s by the inexorable might of the East India Company. After the Nawab of Surat died in 1842 without a male issue, no successor was allowed to take over. Similarly, the nawabs of Cambay (Khambat) and Sachin found themselves manoeuvred into a corner and rendered powerless. The era of rich nawabs splurging on expensive foreign goods was over too soon. Manzoor could not call in his debts and had to shut shop. But Manzoor had another life to sustain himself. He was a poet.
Beginnings
Even as he tried to make his career as a trader, Sheikh Mohammed Manzoor found himself being drawn into the literary circles of Surat.
The language which found favour with these Gujarati poets was then variously known as Hindi, Rekhta or Hindustani but is now generally termed Urdu. Urdu had graduated from being merely a colloquial language to being the language of the legal courts in north India by the 1840s. It would soon become the literary language of choice for those sections of the elite who had been composing in Persian earlier. Urdu prose, neglected for long after a hesitant beginning in the early 1800s, was resurrected by its use in the formal and informal correspondence of prominent men of letters. Urdu was also enriched by translations of legal codes and literature from English and Persian.
The title page of ‘Guldasta Nishat o Suroor’ by Manzoor.
It would soon become a pan-Indian language but that was in a future no one could have imagined in the 1850s.
The most prominent poet from Surat in the mid-nineteenth century was Munshi Ghulam Mohammed who composed under the takhallus Samjhoo. Popularly known as Mian Samjhoo, he had a parallel career in diplomacy and poetry. Having accompanied a son of the Mughal emperor Akbar Shah (reigned 1806–37) on the Haj pilgrimage from Surat, Samjhoo went with him to Delhi on their return. During his long stay at the capital, his ustads were Momin Khan ‘Momin’ and Muhammad Ibrahim ‘Zauq’, leading Urdu poets of that period, who examined and corrected his ghazals.
He later went to Hyderabad where his patron was Maharaja Chandulal, the diwan or prime minister of the Nizam, and an accomplished poet himself. By the 1840s, Samjhoo was back in Gujarat and in the employ of the Nawab of Cambay, Hussain Yavar Khan (reigned 1841–80). He was initially employed as a munshi or secretary but had graduated to being the Nawab’s ambassador plenipotentiary to the East India Company. Samjhoo, who had resided for many years in cities which set the standards in Urdu – Delhi and Hyderabad – was the arbiter of good taste in Surat.
Samjhoo’s intermittent presence in Surat enthused many aspiring local poets to compose in Urdu. His linkages with a pan-Indian network of Urdu poets lent credibility to poets of Gujarat who sought to compose in a language not immediately their own. Among his shagirdan or students whose poetry he corrected was Sheikh Mohammed Manzoor. Manzoor’s education, both at Baroda and Surat, had been meagre but he had cultivated a taste for Urdu and Persian poetry and prose.
He began composing Urdu poetry in its various forms: ghazal, masnavi (long narrative poems), rubaai (quatrains) and so on. He also composed dadra and thumri to be sung to specific Hindustani classical ragas. Moreover, unlike his contemporaries who still opted to write prose in Persian, he began writing Urdu prose—naql or moral stories which would serve as exemplars.
The title page of Tutiya-e Nargis Makhmoor, by Manzoor.
By 1850, Manzoor seems to have been spending longer periods of time in Mumbai. He would have keenly observed the emergence of printing as an option to produce and disseminate Urdu and Persian texts. Persian books were being printed in Mumbai using typography from the 1810s. After the advent of lithography, which made it easier to print Persian texts, a vibrant print culture centring around Persian developed in the city. In contrast, only a handful of Urdu books—mostly books connected to religion or education—had been printed in Mumbai. For example, the first Hindustani/Urdu textbook, Taleem Namah, compiled by Munshi Mohammad Ibrahim Makba was lithographed in 1835.
The medium of print must have captivated Manzoor. Besides Mumbai imprints, he may have seen printed works of leading Urdu poets such as Mir Taqi Mir (1722–1811) and Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869). Mir was perhaps the first Urdu poet whose kulliyat (complete works) was printed, albeit posthumously in 1811 at the Hindoostanee Press, Calcutta. Ghalib’s diwan, a selection of his Urdu poetry, was first printed in Delhi in 1841 with his Persian foreword; a second enlarged edition soon followed in 1847. The first book of Urdu verse to be printed in Mumbai in 1845 was Majma-ul ashaar (A Gathering of Verses), a selection of the best verses of the most famous poets including Mirza Sauda and Meer Dard.
Manzoor was perhaps the first Urdu poet from western India to oversee the printing of his collected works. He also dispensed with Persian for the prose sections, unlike many of his contemporaries who still persisted in using that language when writing the foreword or afterword to their Urdu works.
But, most remarkably, he included an autobiography in the introductory text to one of the compositions. Brief though it is, the autobiography, from which I have already quoted, provides a peep into a poet’s life not commonly afforded in the 1850s. It is, perhaps, the first autobiographical text to be printed in Urdu. The book, about 180 pages long, consists of four different compositions, each with its own title page. The first masnavi, from which the book takes its title is Manzoor Jahani (The World of Manzoor).
The first page of Jigarsoz.
It is followed by another masnavi, Jigarsoz, which came in for praise in a contemporary biographical dictionary or tazkira of Urdu poets of Gujarat. This was followed by a selection of Manzoor’s ghazals and other verse enticingly titled Tutiya-e Nargis Makhmoor (Intoxicated by Kohl-lined Eyes).
The final work, the longest and in prose, is Guldasta Nishat o Suroor (Exultation and Exhilaration). It is a collection of moral stories prefaced by the autobiographical introduction. His ustad, Mian Samjhoo, impressed his seal of approval on the imprint by composing a chronogram to mark the publication of the book.
Manzoor Jahani was printed at the Matba Hashmi, Mumbai in the Hijri year 1269 (1852/53). I have not been able to trace any other publication, in either Urdu or Persian, from this press. The scribe, who remains nameless, has followed the manuscript tradition to lay out the text on the page. The primary text (matan) is framed at the centre of the page and marginalia (hashiya) radiate outward and are aligned at an angle to the text. But the scribe at the Matba Hashmi seems to have been inexperienced and made a complete hash of the layout. Since Manzoor’s manuscript did not have any marginalia, the margins are also used to write the primary text, making reading very difficult. The scribe, who generally has a good and steady hand, also seems to have lost his concentration at times, evidenced by sloppy handwriting and missing page numbers.
Was the book printed for free distribution or was it sold by the printer at his print-house? Or were there subscribers who had paid in advance? What did Manzoor make of the printed text? Was he disappointed by the scribal errors? Though we have no answers to these questions, the key might be in the five-page errata (galat nama)—written in a different, shoddy hand, perhaps Manzoor’s own—at the end of the book. Manzoor pleads with the reader to incorporate these corrections into the text while admonishing them that they would be committing a cardinal sin (quoting a verse from the Koran) if they did not do so. He also advertises his next book, another collection of stories, which was to be published in the next few months. Evidently, he still had confidence in print.
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In 1853, when his book was printed, Manzoor was in a happy situation. He had recovered from the setbacks of his trading career. After a stint as an accountant with an Arab businessman, he was then in the employ of Meer Jaffur Ali Khan, son-in-law of the late Nawab of Surat. Manzoor, who lived until Hijri 1308 (1890/91), continued to engage with print, even starting a newspaper in Surat titled Manzoor-ul akhbar. I could neither trace any contemporary reactions to the printing of this Urdu book nor locate any later references to Sheikh Mohammad Manzoor.
In the next few decades, Urdu blossomed into a full-fledged language, supplanting Persian as the language of scholarship, law, prose, poetry and religion. It soon graduated to being the medium of mass entertainment as the language of Parsi theatre. In Mumbai, Urdu printing grew rapidly in the following decades and numerous lithographic presses, some more long-lived than others, came into existence. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Mumbai, with its dozen Urdu newspapers and a steady stream of books and magazines, rivalled the cities of Lucknow, Delhi and Hyderabad as an Urdu print and publishing hub.
Murali Ranganathan is a writer and historian researching the 19th century with a special focus on print history and culture.
