Amir Khusrau

Amīr Khusrau Dihlavī (Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau, 1253–1325), born at Patiyali in present-day Uttar Pradesh to a Turkic father and an Indian mother, was the foremost poet, musician, and litterateur of the Delhi Sultanate. A disciple of the Chishti Sufi saint Shaikh Nizāmuddīn Auliyā, he styled himself Tuti-yi Hind ("Parrot of India") and served as court poet to a succession of seven Sultans, from Balban through Ghiyāsuddīn Tughlaq. His life thus spans the Mamluk, Khalji, and early Tughlaq dynasties, making his oeuvre a primary literary source for the political history of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century North India.

Khusrau's prolific output blended Persian classical forms with the emerging Hindavi (early Urdu/Hindi) speech of the Gangetic plain, earning him recognition as a founder of Indo-Persian literature and an early shaper of what became the Urdu and Hindustani idioms. His major Persian works include the Khamsa (a quintet modelled on Nizami), the Tughlaq Nama, and several historical mathnavis — the Qiran us-Sa'dain (on the meeting of Bughra Khan and Kaiqubad), Miftah ul-Futuh, Ashiqa (Duval Rani Khizr Khan, recounting the romance of Khizr Khan), and Nuh Sipihr ("Nine Skies"), which lauds the natural and cultural wealth of Hindustan and its many languages. He composed five divans of lyric poetry and is credited in tradition with riddles, dohas, and Hindavi compositions still sung in Sufi gatherings.

In music, Khusrau is venerated as a central figure in the development of the Hindustani tradition. Tradition attributes to him the qawwali devotional form sung at Chishti shrines, the tarana style, and innovations associated with the sitar and tabla, alongside ragas such as Zeelaf and Sarparda — though the instrument-invention claims are debated by modern musicologists. His tomb stands beside that of Nizāmuddīn Auliyā at the Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, where his death anniversary is observed and qawwali is performed. He is the only major medieval figure who consciously celebrated a composite Indo-Islamic identity, declaring his pride in Hindustan in the Nuh Sipihr.

For the UPSC examination, Amir Khusrau recurs in the Art and Culture component of GS Paper I (Prelims and Mains) and is a staple of questions on medieval literature, Sufism, the Bhakti–Sufi syncretic tradition, and the evolution of Hindustani classical music. Prelims frequently tests author–work matching (associating him with Tughlaq Nama, Qiran us-Sa'dain, or Nuh Sipihr), his patron saint Nizāmuddīn Auliyā, and his musical attributions (qawwali, tarana, sitar). Mains questions situate him within the cultural synthesis of the Delhi Sultanate and the origins of the Urdu language. Candidates should distinguish firmly attributed works from traditionally ascribed musical innovations, since the latter are a common source of factually disputed Prelims options.