Fayzi Deccani

Biography

Fayz Dakkani, Shaykh Abu al-Fayz (1547-1630), son of Shaykh Abu al-Fayz ibn Mubarak and brother of Shaykh Abu al-Fazl Dakkani. An India poet who composed poetry in Persian. A distinguished personality from India attached to the court of Jalal al-Din Akbar Shah. A poet with noms de plume Fayzi, and later Fayyazi and Fayzi Fayyazi, he was the poet laureate at the court of Jalal al-Din Akbar. His father, Shaykh Mubarak Naguri was of Arab descent. Born in Agra, Fayzi Dakkani studied under his father and learned poetry, belles-lettres, and the epistolary art for a while from Khwaja Husayn Marwazi. He found his way in his youth into the court of the Gurkanids of India. Owing to the impediments facing his family, they fled from their adversaries, but they were finally welcomed by Jalal al-Din Akbar in 1566 when Fayzi was patronized by the sultan and became the tutor of his children. Jalal al-Din Akbar was intent on establishing a society for conducting studies on different religions and Fayzi Dakkani and his brother were among 18 scholars appointed as members of the society. He was sent as an emissary by Jalal al-Din Akbar in 1590 to other lands where he made the acquaintance of poets like Malik Qummi and Zuhuri Turshizi. He returned to Dakkan in 1689 and died of an ailment in Lahore. He reportedly composed 101 works, including: translation of Lilavati from Sanskrit into Persian; Qur’anic exegeses Mawarid al-Kalim and Sawati’ al-Ilham in whose orthography no points were used; Kulliyyat, i.e. complete works, including qasidas, ghazals, qit’as, quatrains, tarkibs, and mathnawis; Panj-nama, in verse, in response to Nizami’s Panj Ganj; Munsha’at, viz. epistles, collected later by his nephew Nur al-Din Muhammad which he entitled Latifa-yi Ghaybi, also known as Latifa-yi Fayyazi. Shaykh Fayzi wrote a Qur’anic exegesis in whose orthography no dots were used. Well-versed in literary and religious disciplines, he wrote a Qur’anic exegesis entitled Sawati’ al-Ilham. A master of Persian poetry in India, particularly skillful in qasidas, ghazals, and mathnawis, he composed mathnawis on the model of Nizami, including Sulayman u Bilqis; Nal wa Daman; Haft Kishwar; Markaz-i Adwar; and Dastan-i Gita.

Lughatnama-yi Dihkhuda (11/ 17263); Farhang-i A’lam-i Sukhan (2/ 1435-1436).