# Diwan-e-Ghalib

- id: diwan-e-ghalib
- original title: دیوانِ غالب / Diwan-e-Ghalib
- author: Mirza Ghalib
- language: Urdu
- composed: c. 1816–1841, New Delhi
- field: poetry

The published divan of the greatest Urdu ghazal poet, translated in parts for a century and a half by everyone who loved it, and carried here entire.

## The chain

- **2026** Urdu -> English, translation [attested]
  Adnan Abbasi (editor), New Delhi
  A complete AI-assisted crossing of the published divan that keeps the radif: every couplet of the first ghazal still lands on 'it is not there'. Made for no patron and no market, which chapter eleven of the book calls the fascination clause.
  Evidence: Thothica 2026

## Worth knowing

Ghalib pruned his own divan ruthlessly for its first Delhi lithograph of October 1841; the rejected verses fill scholarly editions to this day. English nibbled for a century and a half, a ghazal here, ten there, because the radif, the repeated end-phrase every couplet must land on, defeats translators; complete versions arrived only with Niazi (2002) and Rahman (2003). The AI-assisted crossing in this library differs in form and address: it keeps the radif, and every line travels with its original and transliteration. In its first ghazal every couplet still lands on 'it is not there'.

## Sources

- Thothica (2026). Falsafa: the library and librarian (falsafa.ai). falsafa.ai.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).