Urdu poet and critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi on Friday passed away in his home in Allahabad, a month after recovering from Covid-19, reported PTI. He was 85 years old.

“He had been insisting to go back to his home in Allahabad,” Faruqi’s nephew and writer Mahmood Farooqui told the news agency. “We reached here only this morning and within half an hour he passed away at around 11 [am].”

The poet, who received the Padma Shri in 2009, was discharged from a hospital in Delhi on November 23 after he recovered from Covid-19. However, his nephew Farooqui said that the poet developed a fungal infection, mycosis, due to steroids, and his condition deteriorated.

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His final rites will be performed at the Ashok Nagar cemetery in Allahabad at 6 pm on Friday.

Faruqi was born on September 30, 1935, in Uttar Pradesh, and was lauded for reviving “Dastangoi” – a 16th century Urdu oral storytelling artform. The poet’s career spanned over five decades.

His work includes Kai Chaand The Sar-e-Aasmaan, which was translated into English (Mirror of Beauty) in 2016, Ghalib Afsaney Ki Himayat Mein (1989), and The Sun That Rose From The Earth (2014). Faruqi was also given the Saraswati Samman in 1996 for his work She’r-e Shor-Angez, a four-volume study of the 18th century poet Mir Taqi Mir.

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Following the news of his death, tributes poured in. Dastangoi Collective, which the poet oversaw, tweeted: “Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, the Sun of the Urdu World passed away at his home in Allahabad at 11.20 am where he was flown down from Delhi this morning.”

Author William Dalrymple also mourned the Urdu poet’s death. “RIP, Janab Shamsur Rahman Faruqi saheb, one of the last great Padshahs of the Urdu literary world,” he tweeted. “This is such sad news.”

Here are a few other tributes:

Also read:

Urdu was a neglected language, damned as ‘foreign’ or ‘Pakistani’: Urdu writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqi