Fasihi Haravi

Fasihi Hirawi, Mirza Fasih al-Din (1639), son of Abu al-Makarim. A poet from a distinguished Sayyid family of Herat whose genealogy traces back to Khwaja ‘Abd Allah Ansari (1088). His great grandfather, Mawlana Mirjan, departed for Bukhara together with a number of personalities from Herat. Similar to his father, Fasihi was born in Bukhara, though he returned with his family to Herat in 1569 where he spent his youth. Later, he entered the services of the governor of Khurasan, Hasan Khan Shamlu (1792) and his son, Hasan Khan. Intent on finding his way into the Indian court, Fasihi fled Herat to Qandahar in 1613, but he was arrested a short while later and was cast into prison on the orders of the governor of Khurasan. He was released shortly and was comforted. Since he could not manage to travel to India, he had to send his Divan of poetry there. Upon the arrival of Shah ‘Abbas I in Herat in 162, he was patronized by the Shah whom he accompanied to Qazwin, though he returned to Herat after sometime. He was awarded the title ‘Poet Laureate of Khurasan.’ He was a skillful poet, particularly in composing qasidas and ghazals and trained poets like Nazim Hirawi, Darwish Wala, and Mirza Jalal Asir Shahristani. He was also a skillful calligrapher and wrote an elegant Shikasta. His poetry is simple and fluent, imbued with delicate and lyrical themes, similar to the poets of the Khurasani style. His poetry is free from complicated themes and far-fetched and compound metaphors. A manuscript copy of his Divan, including ghazals, qasidas, qit’as, quatrains, tarkib-bands, and tarji’bands, is available at the Bankipore (Bankipur) Library. Another manuscript, including two mathnawis, is preserved at the library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. The number of the couplets composed by him has been reported as 4,000 and 6,000 by Awhadi and Nasrabadi respectively. A selection of his ghazals and qasidas, entitled Intikhab-i Qasa’id wa Ghazaliyyat-i Mirza Fasih al-Din Hirawi, running to 1,000 couplets, is available with Husayn Partaw Bayza’i which was dated in the poet’s lifetime.

Danishnama-yi Adab-i Farsi, Adab-i Farsi dar Afghanistan (3/ 377).