Mirza Abdulkadir Bedil

Bedil, Mirza Abdulkadir 

(also Bidel). Born 1644, in Delhi; died there 1721. Poet and thinker.

Bedil was born into the family of a soldier in Bengal. He wrote in Farsi. After traveling widely in India, he lived in Delhi from 1685 until the end of his life.

Bedil left a rich legacy in poetry (as many as 200,000 lines of verse) and prose. His major works are Talisman of Wonderment (written in 1669); Great Ocean (1681); Sinai of Knowledge (on his travels); the memoirs The Four Elements; and the philosophical didactic work Understanding (written during 1711–12), which includes the romantic narrative poem Komde and Modan. In works written in the spirit of Sufic mysticism, Bedil criticized social injustice and the caste division of the peoples of India, defended reason, and praised science. He influenced the development of Persian literature.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Komde i Modan. Moscow, 1955.

REFERENCES

Aini, Kh. S. Bidel’ i ego poema “Ifron.” Dushanbe, 1956.
Muminov, I. Filosofskie vzgliady Mirzy Bidelia. Tashkent, 1957.
Muminov, I. “Izuchenie tvorchestva Mirzy Bidelia ν Uzbekskoi i Tadzhikskoi SSSR.” lzv. AN Uzbekskoi SSR: Seriia obshchest-vennykh nauk, 1958, no. 1.