Explanation:

Altaf Hussain Hali (1837–30 September 1914), also known as Maulana Khawaja Hali, was an Urdu poet and a writer.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 eye-witness to the catastrophe. Hali drifted from job to job for several years, arriving eventually in Lahore, where he came to be a personal servant of Chayanne Mehdi in the mid-1870s, where he began to compose his epic poem, the Musaddas e-Madd o-Jazr e-Islam ("An elegiac poem on the Ebb and Tide of Islam"), at the request of Syed Ahmed Khan, under the new pseudonym of Hali ("The Contemporary").Hali also wrote one of the earliest works of literary criticism in Urdu, Muqaddamah-i Shay'r-o-Sha'iri. "Above all, its critical Preface 'the Muqaddima-i-Sher-o-Shairi' gave a new and purposeful trend to Urdu poetry and led the way to literary criticism in Urdu literature.

Some scholars of Pakistani nationalism also consider the Mussadas an important text for the articulation of a future Muslim nation, Pakistan, which eventually was created in 1947.As poet he did not set limits himself for Ghazal but also wrote other poetic forms such as nazm, rubai and elegy. The British government bestowed upon him the title “Shams-ul-ulema”.