Abdul Hameed masho gagar ( ps, عبدالحميد ماشوال; died 1732), also known as Abdul Hamid Baba, was an
Afghan poet and
Sufi figure.
Biography
Abdul Hameed baba Masho Gagar was born in the second half of the 17th century (1664-1724 onward) at Masho Gagar, a small village near Badaber Peshawar, a
Pashtun
Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically re ...
tribe. Hameed travelled to
Peshawar
Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...
, where he undertook his education, and became a priest. At this point, Hameed was a man of considerable stature among intellectuals, and students from a number of surrounding districts came to receive instruction from him.
Hameed's poetry was written primarily in the
Pashto language
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
. His poems generally had a
moral to them, and were often tinged with tones of contempt for the world and its lack of virtue. The morals of his poems were based on
Sufism, as a large proportion of other Muslim poetry was.
[
Hameed's exact death date is not known, but it is thought by those in his home village that he died around the year 1732. He died in the same house that he had lived in for most of his life.][
]
Reception
Hameed's poetry was popular even in Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, where he was dubbed "Hameed the Hair-splitter".[
The 19th century British officer and linguist ]Henry George Raverty
Henry George Raverty (31 May 1825 – 20 October 1906) was an officer and linguist in the British Indian Army.
Life
Raverty was born in Falmouth, Cornwall.
He served from 1843 to 1864, rising to the rank of Major in the 3rd Bombay Native Infan ...
calls Hameed Afghanistan's cynical poet and compares him to Saadi (c. 1210) in Persia,[Henry George Raverty]
ÆBD-UL-ḤAMĪD
(p. 85–86), in:
Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans, from the 16th to the 19th Century: Literally translated from the original Pushto; with notices of the different authors, and remarks on the mystic doctrine and poetry of the Sūfīs
' (scan of full text), edited by Henry George Raverty, Williams & Norgate, London 1862. p. 85 "the Saadi of the Pascho language"[
]
References
Further reading
* Henry George Raverty
(p. 85–86), in: ''[http://www.mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10250809-7 Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans, from the 16th to the 19th Century: Literally translated from the original Pushto; with notices of the different authors, and remarks on the mystic doctrine and poetry of the Sūfīs]'' (scan of full text), edited by Henry George Raverty, Williams & Norgate, London 1862
Poetry of Hamid Baba
Short Biography of Abdul Hamid Baba in Pashto language
A Biography of Hameed Baba in Afghanpedia website
A short Biography of Abdul Hameed Mashogagar in Dawatan website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baba, Abdul Hamid
Pashto-language poets
Pashtun people
People from Peshawar
1730s deaths
Year of birth unknown
Pashtun Sufis