Mahmud Gami

Mahmud Gami
Mausoleum of Mahmud Gami
Personal
Born	1765 Adwadar (now Mehmood Abad), Doru Shahabad, Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Died	1855
Resting place	Mehmood Abad Park (opposite Mehmood Gami Masjid), Mehmood Abad, Doru Shahabad, Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Religion	Islam

Mahmud Gami (1765–1855) was a 19th century Kashmiri poet from Doru Shahabad, Anantnag Kashmir. Through his poetic compositions he is well known to introduce Persian forms of Masnavi and ghazal, to the Kashmiri language. He is also regarded as the founding figure of Urdu ghazal in Kashmir.

Biography

Mahmud Gami was born at Mehmood Abad then known as Adwadar - a village in Doru Shahabad, a historical town in South Kashmir. He is noted for his work Yusuf Zulaikha, a poem which is a major contribution to Kashmiri literature. It is the first and the most popular masnavi in Kashmiri. It comprises 700 verses and has also been rendered into the German by the 19th-century European scholar Fredrich Burkhard. After his death Mahmud Gami was laid to rest at a place in his own village.A park has been developed around his grave which is popularly known as 'Mehmood Gami Park'.

He stands out among the poets of his day by the fact that almost all of his work was in the Kashmiri Language. He is famous for his narrative romantic poems Shirin Khusro, Yusuf-Zulaikha, and Laila Majnu". He also versified in kashmiri, the histories of Mahmud of Ghazni, and Haroun Rashid. The Ghazal was Mahmud Gami's forte. His lyrics dealt with Sufi and Love themes, the later predominating.