Yusuf’s Fragrance

It can be said of the 19th century Kashmiri poet, Mahmud Ga mi that he was a pioneer in introducing the Persian genres of the ghazal, nazm, masnavi and na t into Kashmiri. Mahmud Gami’s contribution to Kashmiri poetry is unique in both scope and depth. Not only is he the first truly prolific poet who has written entirely in the Kashmiri language, but much of his poetry also stands out for its beauty of expression and depth of thought, such as in the lyrical romance of Shireen Khusrau, Yusuf Zulaikha, and Layla Majnun.
Yusuf’s Fragrance is both a celebration as well as an homage to Gami’s oeuvre. Through these beautiful verses, we explore themes of love, both physical and metaphysical, philosophy, folklore, and tradition through different narrative devices, such as nazms, masnavis, and vatsuns.

Mahmud Gami (Author)
Mahmud Ga¯ mi stands out among the Kashmiri poets as a pioneer in introducing the Persian genres of the ghazal, nazm, masnavi and na¯ t into Kashmiri. Not only is he the first truly prolific poet of the language, but much of his poetry is also remarkable for its beauty of expression and depth of thought. His vatsuns (lyrical poems) and masnavis (narrative poems) such as ’Yusuf Zulaykha’, ’Khusrau Shi¯ ri¯ n’, ’Layla Majnun’ and ’Sheikh San’a¯ n’ have rightly been acclaimed as significant contributions to Kashmiri poetry.

Mufti Mudasir (Translator)
Mufti Mudasir Farooqi is a faculty in the Department of English, University of Kashmir. Proficient in English, Kashmiri, Urdu, Persian and Arabic, he has made academic contributions to several areas such as literary theory and criticism, postmodern drama, Kashmir history and literature, Indo-Persian literature and Islamic studies. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the research programme ’Future Philology: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship’ at Freie University of Berlin in 2012-13.
His English translation of Kashmir’s foremost Persian poet Tahir Ghani Kashmiri The Captured Gazelle: The Poems of Ghani Kashmiri was published as a Penguin Classic in 2013 while an annotated Urdu translation of Ghani’s complete works titled Aatash-e Toor: Deewan-e GhaniKashmiri has come out in 2022.