Agha Hashar Kashmiri

Agha Hashar Kashmiri
Born	Muhammad Shah 3 April 1879 Banaras, India
Died	28 April 1935 (aged 56) Lahore, Punjab Province (British India), now in Punjab, Pakistan
Occupation	dramatist, playwright and poet
Spouse(s)	Mukhtar Begum, a ghazal singer
Family	Farida Khanum (sister-in-law)

Agha Hashar Kashmiri (3 April 1879 – 28 April 1935) was an eminent Urdu poet, playwright and dramatist who was called the "Shakespeare of Urdu." A number of his plays were Indian Shakespearean adaptations.

Born in 1879 as Muhammad Shah, he soon opted to be called as 'Agha Hashar Kashmiri' after finding out that his roots were in Kashmir. He could not get higher education due to his lack of interest in text books. He started to show interest in stage dramas and moved to Bombay at the young age of 18 and started his career as a playwright there.

An influential Parsi theatre playwright, Agha Hashar Kashmiri'is first play, Aftab-e-Muhabbat, was published in 1897. He started his professional career as a drama writer for the New Alfred Theatrical Company in Bombay, on a salary of only 15 Rs. per month.Mureed-e-Shak, his first play for the company, was an adaptation of Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale. It proved to be a success and his wages were later raised to Rs. 40 per month due to his growing popularity. In his works, Agha had experience introducing shorter songs and dialogues with idioms and poetic virtues in plays. He then wrote several more adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, including Shabeed-e-Naaz (or Achuta Daaman in Hindi), Measure for Measure, 1902) and Shabeed-e-Havas (King John, 1907).

Yahudi Ki Ladki (The Daughter of a Jew), published in 1915, became his best known work. In the coming years, it became a classic in Parsi-Urdu theatre. It was adapted several times in the silent film and early talkies eras, notably Yahudi Ki Ladki (1933) by New Theatres, and by Bimal Roy, as Yahudi (1958) starring Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Sohrab Modi.

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