Shah Muhammad Sagir ( bn, শাহ মুহম্মদ সগীর) was one of the earliest

Bengali Muslim Bengali Muslims ( bn, বাঙালি মুসলমান; ) are adherents of Islam who ethnically, linguistically and genealogically identify as Bengalis. Comprising about two-thirds of the global Bengali population, they are the sec ...

poets, if not the first.

Life

Shah Muhammad Sagir was a poet of the 14/15th century, during the reign of the

Sultan of Bengal The Sultanate of Bengal ( Middle Bengali: শাহী বাঙ্গালা ''Shahī Baṅgala'', Classical Persian: ''Saltanat-e-Bangālah'') was an empire based in Bengal for much of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. It was the domina ...

Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah Ghiyasuddin A'zam Shah ( bn, গিয়াসউদ্দীন আজম শাহ, fa, ) was the third Sultan of Bengal and the Ilyas Shahi dynasty. He was one of the most prominent medieval Bengali sultans. He established diplomatic relatio ...

. He was born to a Fakir family in Chittagong, the then cultural capital of

Arakan Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...

. His best known work is

Yusuf-Zulekha ''Yusuf-Zulekha'' ( bn, ইউসুফ-জুলেখা) is a 15th-century Bengali romantic story in verse written by Shah Muhammad Sagir, which is considered one of the greatest literary works of medieval "golden era" of Bengali literature ...

, which has commendatory verses for

. He was the court poet of

Azam Shah Qutb-ud-Din Muhammad Azam (28 June 1653 – 20 June 1707), commonly known as Azam Shah, was briefly the Mughal emperor who reigned from 14 March 1707 to 20 June 1707. He was the third son of the sixth Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and his chief cons ...

and wrote the volume at his request. Although it has praise for the parents and teachers of the poet, it does not mention their names or residence. Shah Muhammad Sagir is considered to be the first writer to introduce Perso-

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

vocabulary into

Bengali poetry Bengali poetry is a rich tradition of poetry in the Bengali language and has many different forms. Originating in the Bengal region of South Asia, the history of Bengali poetry underwent three successive stages of development: poetry of the ear ...

His works

*''

References

Bengali male poets Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown Bengal Sultanate officers 15th-century Bengali poets 15th-century Indian Muslims {{Bangladesh-poet-stub