Hasan of Delhi

(real name, Amir Hasan Dehlavi). Born 1253 in Budaun, northern India; died 1327 in Devagiri (present-day Daulatabad), Andhra Pradesh, India. Poet of India who wrote in Persian.

Hasan was of humble social background. He belonged to a literary society in the city of Multan from 1280 to 1285 and later moved to Delhi with his friend Amir Khusrau. In Delhi, Hasan at first wrote verse in the vein of freethinking but later joined a Sufi order, the Chishtiyah. He became a lyric poet of the Sufi school and was strongly influenced by Saadi. He wrote a divan of lyric verse, the narrative work Poem of Love, and a prose work, Benefits of the Heart, which is a reliable source for the study of Chishtiyah ideology. Hasan won his greatest renown with his ghazals, which exerted a significant influence on the medieval poets of Persia and Middle Asia.