Marsiya

Marsiya (Persian: مرثیه‎‎) is an elegiac poem written to commemorate the martyrdom and valour of Hussain ibn Ali and his comrades of the Karbala. Marsiyas are essentially religious.The marsiyas written on these events are called classical marsiyas.

The word Marsiya is derived from the Arabic word marthiyya (root R-TH-Y), meaning a great tragedy or lamentation for a departed soul.

This form found a specially congenial soil in Lucknow, chiefly because it was one of the centres of Shia Muslim communities in South Asia, which regarded it an act of piety and religious duty to eulogies and bemoan the martyrs of the battle of Karbala. The form reached its peak in the writing of Mir Babar Ali Anis. Marsiya is a poem written to commemorate the martyrdom of Ahl al-Bayt, Imam Hussain and Battle of Karbala. It is usually a poem of mourning.

The famous marsiya writers in Urdu are Mir Babar Ali Anis, Mir Moonis, Mirza Salamat Ali Dabeer, Mir Zameer, Ali Haider Tabatabai. Najm Afandi, Mir nafees, Mir rais,mir Qadeem, Mir Arif, Syed Husain Taashuq, Mir Ishq, Moaddab lucknavi Adab Lucknavi Mohazzab Lucknavi Syed Sajjad Husain "Shadeed" Mohammed Askari "Jadeed" Sadaq Husain "Shaheed" ,Nawab Baqar Ali "Ravish Lucknavi" , Allama Dr.Syed Ali Imam Zaidi "Gauhar Lucknavi" (Great Grand Son of Mir Baber Ali "Anees" MIr "waheed" Dulha sahab "Uruj" Laddan Sahab "Faiz" Mir "Fareed" Mir "Arif" sarfaraz husain "khabeer" syed Abbas Hiader Muzter jaunpuri, Tayyab Kazmi, Ishrat Lucknavi, Syed Mohammad Ali" Mowassir Jaunpuri"

Mir Babar Ali Anis, a renowned Urdu poet, composed salāms, elegies, nohas and quatrains. While the length of elegy initially had no more than forty or fifty stanzas, it now was beyond one hundred fifty or even longer than two hundred stanzas or bunds, as each unit of marsiya in musaddas format is known. Mir Anis has drawn upon the vocabulary of Arabic, Persian, Urdu/Hindi/Awadhi in such a good measure that he symbolizes the full spectrum of the cultural mosaic that Urdu has come to be.

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