Episode 11: Bedil

Professor Hajnalka Kovacs and Ahmad Rashid Salim join us to discuss the poetry of Bedil Dihlavī (d. 1720), one of the greatest and most influential Persian-language poets of the Indian subcontinent. He wrote over 2,800 ghazals, four mathanwis (a genre of narrative verse in rhymed couplets), and other poetic texts, all of which circulated throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia, and the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. Known for its complex and ambiguous style, creative metaphors and images, and adaptations of Sanskrit and Hindu themes and figures, Bedil’s poetry is highly philosophical, brilliantly translating and thinking through the issues of Ibn […]