Urdu

Urdu Language having traditions of 800 hundred Years


The availability of the Urdu books online can play a huge role in the promotion of the Urdu language. However, some people have very concerns regarding the availability of the Urdu books online.
There are different aspects of this issue. Some of them are explained briefly below.
  • The first aspect of this issue is the financial aspect. This step might prove to be a huge loss of money for the publishers. Especially in the Pakistan, the prices of the books are too high. It is true that the cost of the paper is too high in this country. However, it cannot make up for the fact that most of the publishing houses make undue profits by monopolizing.
  • So to break the monopoly of the publishing houses, it is better to make most of the Urdu books available online.
  • Some writers are also not comfortable with their books published online. It is ironical that most of the writers say that they want to reach a wide audience. Yet they fail to develop a liking for the medium on which their work can be viewed by thousands of people every day.
  • One way to satisfy the writers is to pay them handsomely to publish their books online.
  • Some writers allow only some of their books to be published online. For them it is a way to market them. This is a win-win situation because the writer gets great publicity at a very nominal cost and the readers get a free book to read online.


Almost there are 60 to 70 million native speakers of Urdu language. According to the survey, around 52 million people are in India according to the survey in 2001 which makes 6 % of the total population of India. 12 million people are in Pakistan in 2008 which is almost 14 % of Pakistan’s population and some several hundred thousand are in Saudia Arabia, United States and Bangladesh where Urdu is known as Bihari.


Urdu language has four main Dialects which has recognized by Urdu speaker
  • Dakhani
  • Rekhta
  • Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region)
  • Pakistani dialect

Dakhani is also known as as Dakani, Deccani, Desia, and Mirgan and it is the local language of Deccan in southern India. Its vocabulary is derived from Marathi and Telugu language and some vocabulary from Persian, Turkic and Arabic which are not present in Standard Urdu. Dakhani is mainly spoken in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu

There is a lot of debate always going on about the Urdu and the Hindi language. Are they both the same languages or they both are different languages? Well, it is something very hard to decide.
The following are some of the factors, which can be used to explore the differences and the similarities of the Urdu and the Hindi languages.
  1. The script of the languages
  2. The Persian, Devnagri, and two other types of scripts are used to write the Urdu and the Hindi languages. The Devnagri script is the most used script to write both languages.
  3. The accent of the languages
  4. The accent of the Urdu and the Hindi language is almost the same. A slight difference is that the softly spoken language is often called Urdu and the language spoken in a rustic way is often referred to as Hindi. A general conception is that Urdu is a more polished language than the Hindi.



Urdu is the National Language of Pakistan and was introduced in 17th century in central Asia. The word Urdu is derived from Turkish word “ ordu ” meaning of army or camp. Urdu was used as code language by the Muslim soldiers in the conquest of Ancient India (including countries east until mayanmar) and Eastern Persia. These solider were of mainly Arabs, Turkish and Persian descents but the majority of the soldiers were of Persians origins.  That is why; Urdu become more common in Persians and in a very short time Urdu started dominating Farsi at governmental level and another reason was, Urdu was commonly spoken in many races. So to accommodate them there is a requirement official language which is commonly spoken by major group of people.


The Fall of Urdu language started in late 1800’s.  At this time Muslims also lost control over the subcontinent and the rule was taken over by the British.  This resulted in the preferred medium of communication becomes English and Hindustani (for common man).  Hindustani is the mixed version of Hindi and Urdu. It was introduced to somehow merge Hindus and Muslims together to give them single identity (servant of Britain). At this point the Leader and Educated personalities of Muslim realized that they should have a state of their own otherwise Muslims would lose their identity, culture and Religion.
For this cause Muslims created their own state and moved there from the regions where Muslims once ruled for many years such as Agra. Architecture Muslims can still be found in some parts of Agra, Delhi. The state for Muslims was then named as Islamic Republic of Pakistan meaning of Land of Pure. Pakistan was created on legendary vision of Muhammad Ali Jinnah; the state was based on Unity, Faith and Discipline. The leadership, by the will of the people was set to be on the Laws of Shari’a (Islamic Law).

From ages Urdu has very rich poetry tradition because of its versatility in poetry.  The main types of Urdu poetry are:
  • Ghazal
  • Nazm
  • Marsiya
  • Masnavi
  • Qasida
  • Rubayi
Ghazal:
Ghazal consists of couplets (sher or ashaar) which normally follow the rules of mtla, makta, qafia radeef. Couplet of Ghazal are completes their discussed topic within, topics of different couplets are usually not related to each other.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (October 17, 1817 – March 27, 1898) was a great politician, educator, modernist and Islamic reformer in the Indo - Pak subcontinent. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was the pioneer of the Modern Education in Muslim community of Indo - Pak subcontinent. He founded Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College, which was later changed to Aligarh Muslim University. His work gave awareness to the Muslims which gave rise to Politian and every intellectual Muslim who composed Aligarh movement to secure the future of Muslim’s Political future in India.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and it is one of the two official languages other is English, It is official language of five Indian states as well. It is based on Hindi dialect of Delhi. It vocabulary is derived from different languages mainly from Persian and Turkic. Geographically, the origin of Urdu is from Uttar Pradesh in the Subcontinent but gradually in Delhi sultanate and Mughal Empire Urdu became the preferred language.

The original language of Mughals was Chagatai, a Turkic language but when they come to subcontinent the stated adopting Persian Language. Gradually when Mughals came to power they need to communicate with local inhabitants it eventually led them to composition of Sanskrit derived languages having Perso-Arabic script and vocabulary of Persian, Arabic and Turkic. Eventually this composition of languages was named as Urdu.

Mirza Assadullah Baig Khan (27 December 1797 — 15 February 1869) is also known as Dabeer- ul - Mulk, Najm - ud – daulah. His pen name was Ghalib meaning of dominant and his former pen name was Asad meaning of Lion. During the colonial rule of British Mirza Ghalib was one of the classical Urdu and Persian poets of the sub continent. During the life time of Mirza Ghalib, Mughals were totally displaced by British. Some of his work was based on these events. Above all he wrote some of his ghazal are also sung in different ways and by different people. In Urdu poetry Allama Iqbal and Mirza Ghalib are considered to be poets of intellectually level. Both of them are considered to be the Great legends of Urdu Poetry.

Pakistan has two official language English and Urdu. Pakistan is multi linguistic nation with more than 15 languages that are natively spoken by the people of Different Regions. Four are them are provincial Languages Sindhi, Balochi, Pashto and Punjabi and two them are widely spoken are Saraiki and Kashmiri. Below are the Census History of Major languages of Pakistan

Urdu is sometimes referred informally as Rekhta, meaning “rough mixture”.  And according to more formal registers it is referred as zabān-e-Urdu-e-mo'alla “the language of exalted Camp”.
Normally the selection of words with respect to its context describes the politeness and refines of your speech. For example the word paani and aab both have meaning of water, similarly word mard and admi both have meaning of man but the first word in each set is from Hidustani origin and second word is from Persian origin.  Normally the selection of Persian dialect is considered to be more formal than Hindustani origin.
Usually by native speaker the usage of words from Persian or Arabic origin considered to more formal than other origins of Urdu. Similarly if a word is inherited from Sanskrit, the speech is considered to be more informal.

Ghazal is a form of poetry which contains rhyming couplets and a refrain with same line repeating in second verse of every couplet. Ghazal is poetry style of different languages like Arabic, Pashto, Persian, Urdu, Hind, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Turkish. A ghazal is mainly written in two themes pain of separation or loss and beauty of love. The origin of ghazal found back in 6th century and is derived from Arabic panegyric qasida. The structure of Ghazal is more or less similar to Petrarchan sonnet.

Allama Iqbal work was greatly focused on the rectification of Muslim Ummah and revival of Islam in the subcontinent. After becoming the President of All India Muslim League in 1930, he for the first time suggested that Muslims of the subcontinent should have separate state of their own. Iqbal also gave awareness to the Muslims through its Urdu Poetry. His delivered his messages of awareness in such an impressive manner that a wide number of people changed their view and became in the favor of new state for the Muslims of subcontinent.

Urdu literature is mainly consists of poetry than prose. The prose in Urdu language main related to ancient form long epic stories called Dastaan originally it was written in Persian language. These epic stories are generally about magic, fantastic creature or on an event in a very complex manner.

Dastaan was originally started in the Iran and was commonly used by the storytellers later on it was adopted by the several writer of that time. Dastaan mainly focuses on folklore, myths and classical literary subjects. Dastaan was specifically common in Urdu literature, typologically Dastaan is close to eastern genres of literature such as Punjabi qissa, Persian masnawi, Sindhi waqayati bait, etc.

The oldest Dastaaan in Urdu literature is Dastan-i-Amir Hamra originated in early seventeen century and the Bustan-iKhayal (doesnot existed these days) 'The Garden of Imagination' or 'The Garden of Khayal' by Mir Taqi Khayal.

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