‘Maaz Bin Bilal’s Temple Lamp is the long-awaited translation, into English, of one of the most extraordinary and important poems written in India during the 19th century—Chiragh-e-Dair. Composed in exquisite Farsi, it is the great Urdu poet Ghalib’s paean of praise and declaration of love for the city of Banaras. Arriving there in the spring of 1827, the 30-year-old Ghalib fell in love with this ancient and ever-renewed city, at once a setting for the spiritual quest and a pageant of worldly delights. Wandering through its gardens and bazaars, pausing at its temples and savouring the festivities of its ghats, Ghalib stayed in Banaras for three months. He chose, very deliberately, to write his masnavi for the city in 108 verses, a number auspicious to Shaiva and Vaishnava alike. Maaz Bin Bilal brings across the mystical exaltation and sensuous excitement that Ghalib experienced in Banaras. In this gifted translator’s handling, we find our consciousness magically refreshed. We marvel at the capacious imagination of a 19th-century poet who embraced the plurality of his country’s traditions, the cross-pollinating diversity of its belief systems and idioms of everyday life. In retrieving Chiragh-e-Dair at this present moment of darkness and turbulence, Maaz Bin Bilal summons us into the presence of a ‘Temple Lamp’ that casts its illumination upon all of us, regardless of what inherited identity or location we may represent. This splendid translation shows us the way back to a past of shared relationships and lovingly nurtured dialogue, and also to a future when we may be healed of the divisions that we have inflicted upon ourselves.’

—Ranjit Hoskote, Poet and Translator

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‘Chiragh-e-Dair, a Persian masnavi by Ghalib, is perhaps the greatest poem ever written on the holy city of Benaras in any language. Through a series of subtle and complex images, exquisite nuances, unmistakable resonances, Ghalib celebrates, adores, explores and articulates the beauty, the ancientness, the spiritual ethos, the sensuous presence and grandeur of a great city. And its life line the river Ganga.

Temple Lamp.

Temple Lamp is both a communicative and faithful translation in English. The Lamp, coincidentally, also throws light on how a great modernist poet in Urdu and Persian was able to capture the abiding sacred enchantment and the rich natural wealth of a holy city of Hinduism while being a Muslim.’

—Ashok Vajpeyi, Poet and Literary-Cultural Critic

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‘In his lively, readable, well-annotated interpretation of Chiragh-e- Dair, Maaz Bin Bilal shows us how keenly the young Ghalib enjoyed his stay in Banaras—and how much he felt it as an almost illicit escape from his life in Delhi. For the newcomer, he also provides an extensive and helpful introduction. His work is the best available overview of this unusual Persian masnavi.’

—Frances Pritchett Professor Emerita of Modern Indic Languages Columbia University

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‘Translating [the works of] Ghalib whether from Persian or Urdu into English has never been easy. Nonetheless, brave translators who take on this challenge must be applauded. Maaz Bin Bilal’s rendition of Ghalib’s celebrated narrative poem Chiragh-e-Dair is a step towards opening a treasure [trove] of beautiful masnavis that are some of the finest in the Persian classical tradition. Bilal prefaces his translation with a comprehensive introduction that provides much needed context to the poem, and to Ghalib’s poetics.’

—Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Professor, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia

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‘Here at last is a lucid and superbly researched English translation of Ghalib’s famous masnavi on Banaras. The translation lets us experience how Ghalib envisioned the beauties and pleasures of Banaras in line with an old Persian-Arabic geographical tradition of celebrating the virtues of a city and its people, inscribing Banaras into a Persianate literary tradition of validating civic flourishing as paradise on earth.’

—Prashant Keshavmurthy, Associate Professor of Persian-Iranian Studies Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

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Dr Maaz Bin Bilal ne ek bada kaam kiya hai. Is aandhi mein Chiragh-e- Dair ko bujhne se bacha liya. Banaras ko ‘mandir ka diya’ kehne wale Mirza Ghalib the. Farsi mein likhi is nazm ko angrezi mein tarjumah karke Dr Maaz ne baaqi duniya ke saare saahil khol diye hain.

—Gulzar, Poet, Lyricist, and Film-maker

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[Dr Maaz Bin Bilal has completed a work of immense importance. During this storm, he has saved the ‘Temple Lamp’ from blowing out. It was Ghalib who called Banaras ‘a temple lamp’. By translating this Persian poem into English, Dr Maaz has unlocked the shores of the rest of the world.]