Masud Husain Khan

Family

Professor Emeritus Masud Husain Khan was born in Qaimganj, district Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh, on January 28, 1919. His family has a rich legacy of excellence.

His father Muzaffar Husain Khan completed his education from Islamia High School Etawah and Mohammadan Anglo Oriental (M.A.O.) College Aligarh. He started his judicial career in Hyderabad but very soon got infected with T.B. and died by the age of 28. Masud Husain was just 2 years old when he lost his father. Muzaffar Husain Khan was eldest brother of-

Dr. Zakir Husain, the third President of India. Dr. Zakir Husain also served as Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University.
Dr. Yusuf Husain Khan, professor at Osmania University Hyderabad and Urdu’s renowned critic who later became pro-vice chancellor at Aligarh Muslim University.
Dr. Mahmood Husain Khan, who served as Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University from 1960 to 1963, and of Karachi University from 1971 until his death in 1975. He was appointed Minister of State for both Defence and Foreign Affairs in 1949, before serving as Minister for Education from 1952 to 1953 in Pakistan. He is the father-in-law of General Rahimuddin Khan, the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pakistan Army and Balochistan's longest-serving governor.

Masud Husain’s mother, Fatima Begum was eldest sister of-

Sultan Alam Khan, a state minister.
Quddus Alam Khan, who was also Masud Husain’s father-in-law. His wife and Masud Husain’s mother-in-law, Badrud-duja Begum was the daughter of the Nawab of Burhasi and Datawali, and was also related to the Nawabs of Malerkotla and Dujana.
Ghulam Rabbani Taban, a well known poet and progressive writer.
Khurshed Alam Khan, Union minister of External affairs in Government of India. He was Governor of Karnataka from 1991 to 1999 and governor of Goa from 1989 to 1991. Salman Khurshid, Indian Foreign Minister, is his son.

On 16th October, 2010 Masud Husain Khan died at Aligarh. He is survived by his wife, 4 daughters and one son.

Education

After finishing the primary education from Jamia Millia Islamia, Masud Husain Khan studied in Dhaka for a while. He completed his higher education from Delhi University and Aligarh Muslim University. He did his Ph.D. under the guidance of Professor Rasheed Ahmad Siddiqi and wrote his magnum opus “Muqaddama-e-tareekh-e-zaban-e-Urdu” which was later published as a book and became a landmark work of Masud Husain. He also studied Hindi and Sanskrit literature and was familiar with Bengali, Persian and French language too. Later on he finished his D.Lit. from Paris in Linguistics.

Career

Masud Husain Khan served as Visiting Professor at Department of South Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

In 1962, he became chairman at Osmania University’s Urdu department where he served till 1968 when he was made the head of the linguistics department at Aligarh Muslim University.

He was Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu Hind’s acting general secretary during 1969-1970.

From 3rd November 1973 to 15th August 1978 he served Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia as Vice-Chancellor. Progress of Jamia was the main concern of Masud Husain and he initiated the process to make Jamia a vibrant and viable University like other Universities.

After his retirement, Masud Husain was appointed as Visiting Professor at Iqbal Institute, Kashmir University, Srinagar and used to teach research methodology.

Masud Husain was also the Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Urdu Aligarh until the mid-90s. Jamia Urdu, Aligarh was established as a distance education institution way back in 1939 for imparting Urdu education.

He was the President of All India Muslim Educational Conference until his death in 2010.

Works

Masud Husain Khan is credited with having written 26 books, all of which are considered as valuable contribution to Urdu prose and linguistics.

Masud Husain’s magnum opus, ‘Muqaddama-e-tareekh-e-zaban-e-Urdu’, describes in detail the history of Urdu’s origin and development. On account of coherence and plausibility, the book is considered to offer one of the most acceptable theories on the genesis and development of Urdu. He proved his theory with historical and authentic evidence, taking into account the formation of Indo-Aryan languages. Keeping in view the theories of historical linguistics and ancient sources, he proved that Urdu was born in and around Delhi. According to him, four vernacular dialects, namely Brij bhasha, Mewati, Haryanvi and Khari boli, exerted their influences on Urdu during its long formative phases and among them Haryanvi and Khari boli were the ones that proved to be more decisive. Later, the same language reached Deccan in the 13th and 14th centuries AD with the Muslim armies and slowly but surely gained refinement over the centuries and a standard Urdu language emerged. Before Masud Husain, Muhammad Husain Azad, Hafiz Mahmood Sheerani, Shamsullah Qadri, Mohiuddin Qadri Zor, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, T. Grahame Bailey and some other scholars had presented their theories on Urdu’s origin but none found favour with Masood sahib. So he set out to find for himself the truth. His advantage? A keen study of the Indo-Aryan linguistics and an understanding of the Shaurseni Prakrit that later developed into dialects, such as Khari boli, spoken in and around Delhi. In his opinion, the emergence of these modern Indo-Aryan dialects could not have begun earlier than 1000 AD and, therefore, Hafiz Mahmood Sheerani’s theory that saw Punjab as the cradle of Urdu and premised that Urdu was a language that was brought to Delhi by Muslim armies after the conquest of Punjab, was not plausible. First published in 1948, the book, originally his PhD dissertation, has run into many editions in India and Pakistan.

His second book 'Urdu Zaban-o-Adab' written in 1954 was equally popular.

Phonetics is the other forte of Masud Husain’s. He was the first to analyse the words of Urdu from a phonological point of view. During his stay in London, Masud Husain had a chance to benefit from the insights of Professor J. R. Firth who was the first to introduce the concept of ‘Prosodic Phonology’. Basing his DLit thesis ‘A phonetic and phonological study of the word in Urdu’ on Firth’s theory, he carried out research that was published in 1954. Said to be a rare feat of descriptive linguistics, it was translated into Urdu and published by Professor Mirza Khalil Beg in 1984.

He has a large number of books to his credit including his autobiography ‘Wurood-e-Masood’ and the collection of his poetry ‘Do neem’.

In his brief stay of almost one and a quarter year at Iqbal Institute, he published several papers of Allama Iqbal and his poetry in different journals including “Iqbaaliyaat”, the journal of Iqbal Institute Kashmir University.

He was the Chief Editor of Urdu-Urdu Lughat.

Awards and Honours

It was Iqbal Institute where he finished his book on Allama Iqbal for which Masud Husain Khan received Sahitya Akademi award.

He was conferred with Delhi Urdu Academy’s highest honour – Kul Hind Bahadur Shah Zafar Award--in recognition of his contribution to the study of Urdu language and literature.

In February 2010 Ghalib Institute, New Delhi felicitated him in a grand function for his yeomen contribution to Urdu language and literature.

He was granted the designation of “Professor Emeritus” by the Aligarh Muslim University in 1977, the first in Social Sciences.

He was also awarded the Karachi Niaz Fatehpuri Award in 1986.