Daulat Uzir Bahram Khan

Daulat Uzir Bahram Khan (c 16th century) medieval Bangla poet from Fateyabad or Jafrabad in chittagong district, son of Mobarak Khan, a minister of the ruler of Chittagong. One of his ancestors, Hamid Khan, was the principal courtier of Hussein Shah, Sultan of Gauda. Hamid Khan settled in Chittagong where he was a jagirdar, or landlord, of two parganas. Bahram Khan';s real name was Asauddin. After the death of his father, he was made minister by Nizam Shah Sur, the ruler of Chittagong.

Bahram Khan wrote two long narrative poems, laily-majnu and Imam-Vijay, both of which have their roots in arabic literature. The Indian poet Amir Khasru and the Persian poets Abdur Rahman Jami and Abdullah Hativi had also written poems on the theme of Laily-Majnu in 1298, 1484 and 1531 respectively. It is believed that Bahram Khan based his poem on one of these versions.

Bahram Khan was the first poet to write a Bangla poem on the tragic love story of Laily and Majnu. However, while the Persian versions of Laily-Majnu are basically mystical, Bahram Khan's highly rhetorical version is a poem of secular love. Other Bengali writers who wrote about the ill-fated lovers include Muhammad Khater, who wrote a dobhasi puthi in 1864, and sheikh fazlul karim, who wrote a narrative poem in modern Bangla in 1903. The theme of Imam-Vijay is the tragic battle of Karbala. [Wakil Ahmed]