Nassakh, Khan Bahadur Abdul Ghafur

Nassakh, Khan Bahadur Abdul Ghafur (1833-1889) civil servant and poet. Nassakh was the pen-name of Khan Bahadur Abu Muhammad Abdul Ghafur, who was born in a kazi family of Faridpur. His father, Fakir Muhammad (1774-1844) was a lawyer of Kolkata civil court. Nawab abdool luteef was his elder brother. Apart from Bangla, Urdu and Persian, he also knew Arabic, English and Hindi.

Abdul Ghafur Nassakh served as deputy magistrate and deputy collector (1860-1888) in various places of Bengal, including dhaka. He arranged mushairas (poetical gatherings) and inspired young poets.

Nassakh was essentially an Urdu poet, but also composed poems in Persian. His books of poems include Ashar-e-Nassakh (1866), Daftar-e-Bemis'a'l (1869), G'av'j-e-T'a'w'a'r'i'kh (1873), A'rmug'a'n (1875) K'a'nz-e-Tawarikh (1877) and Armugani (1884). The Urdu poet Ghalib (1797-1869) praised the poems contained in Daftar-e-Bemisal. Ganj-e-Tawarikh and Kanz-e-Tawarikh contain accounts of great Islamic personalities. In 1874 Nassakh translated P'a'nd N'a'm'a, by the Persian poet, Shayekh Fariduddin Akhter, into Urdu under the title of Chashm'a'-e-Faez. Nassakh also wrote a biography of Urdu and Persian poets in Sukh'a'n-e-Shu'a'r'a (1874). Another important literary contribution by him was T'a'zkir'a'tul Mu'a'sir'i'n. 

Among his other writings are Intikh'a'b-e-N'a'kam (1879), a critique of the marsi'a (elegies) of Lucknow poets, Mir, Anis (1802-74) and Mirza Dabir (1803-75), and M'a'zh'a'b-e-Mu'a'mm'a (1888), a Persian booklet in verse. [Kaniz-e-Butool] [Kaniz-e-Butool  Professor of Urdu, Dhaka University]