Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's book discusses the origins and progress of Urdu as a literary language and culture. He analyzes, through examples from dominant literary forms, the origins of both Hindi and Urdu; and evaluates the growth of serious Urdu poetry through studies of all its major forms and practitioners. This is a pioneering work that demolishes myths, proposing instead provocative new theses that all South Asian and Islamic scholars will find riveting.