Abdul Ahad Azad's Kashmir Zabaan oar Shairi is a seminal text of Kashmiri literary criticism. There are no two opinions about its being the foundational text of the literary criticism of Kashmiri literature, especially the poetry component. The bo...

Abdul Ahad Azad's Kashmir Zabaan oar Shairi is a seminal text of Kashmiri literary criticism. There are no two opinions about its being the foundational text of the literary criticism of Kashmiri literature, especially the poetry component. The book is at once a bedrock and the springhead of Kashmiri literature. Before this monumental work, there was no narrative of this kind, and it continues to nourish the literary streams and minds of future generations. This book has been compared with Edward Granville Browne’s (1862-1926) multi-volume A Literary History of Persia because like the latter it chronicles the literary history of Kashmir, an endeavor which had not been pursued before. Or the comparison has also been made with Shibli Nomani’s (1857-1914) Shuara ul Ajam. The latter again is a detailed examination of the literary history of Urdu in the subcontinent. Altaf Husain Hali’s (1837-1914) Muqaddma Shair o Shair is another literary document which is taken as a parallel of Azad’s multi-volume text. All three are pioneering attempts of their kind in their specific linguistic and regional contexts. Azad’s text is a classic without any parallel in the literary annals of Kashmir. Azad was the first person to have taken this task on his shoulders and succeeded to a great extent.