Mir Anees

Mir Babar Ali Anees, known as Mir Anees, was an Indian Urdu poet of the nineteenth century who wrote under the pen name Anees, meaning close friend or companion. He is remembered above all for his marsiyas, long elegiac poems on the tragedy of Karbala, a form that was customary in his time and that is now usually recited only in selected sections at religious gatherings. His verse drew on Persian, Urdu, Arabic and Sanskrit words. He came from a family of poets, spent the height of his career in Lucknow, and died in 1874. The critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi has called his marsiyas the best premodern Urdu model of narrative, lyrical and orally dramatic poetry.