Altaf Hussain Hali ( – ; 1837 – 31 December 1914), also known as Maulana Khawaja Hali, was an Urdu poet and writer. Early life He was born in Panipat to Aizad Baksh and was a descendant of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. He was in the care of his elder brother Imdad Husain after the death of his parents and when he was seventeen he married his cousin Islam-un-Nisa. Hali studied the Quran under Hafiz Mumtaz Husain, Arabic under Haji Ibrahim Husain and Persian under Syed Jafar Ali. Aged seventeen he travelled to Delhi to study at the madrasa opposite Jama Masjid, which was called Husain Baksh ka Madrasa. Hali composed an essay in Arabic that supported the dialectics of Siddiq Hasan Khan, who was an adherent of Wahhabism. His teacher, Maulvi Navazish Ali, belonged to the Hanafi school and when he saw the essay he tore it up. At this time Hali adopted the takhallus "Khasta", which means "the exhausted, the distressed, the heartbroken". He showed his work to the poet Ghalib, who advised him: "Young man, I never advise anyone to write poetry but to you I say, if you don't write poetry, you will be very harsh on your temperament". In 1855 he returned to Panipat and his first son was born. In the following year he was employed at the Collector's office in Hissar. Writing The Indian rebellion of 1857 was an armed uprising in British India against the oppressive and destructive British colonial rule and was also popularly remembered as the 'First War of Independence'. This was a turning point in his life because he was an eyewitness to the catastrophe. His family took in a widowed girl who lived with them for the rest of her life. Her plight left a deep impression on Hali and he composed two poems on the condition of women: Munajaat-e-Beva (Supplication of the Widow) and Chup ki Daad (Homage to the Silent). Syeda Saiyidain Hameed called Hali "Urdu's first feminist poet". In 1863 he was appointed tutor to the children of Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta of Jahangirabad, a position he held for eight years. In Lahore he was employed at the Government Book Depot from 1871 to 1874, where his task was to correct Urdu translations of English books. This brought him into contact with a wide range of literature and led to him writing the first book of