Poets and writers
From the Sufi kafi to the modern lyric: the voices that made Punjabi a language of longing, protest and devotion.
Gurus and Mughals
1469 – 1708Misls and Afghans
1708 – 1799
Colonial Punjab
1849 – 1947
The Sufi poet of Mirpur whose Saif ul Malook is recited across the Pothohar and Kashmir.
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The Sufi poet of the Cholistan desert, whose Saraiki kafis sing of rain, camels and the Beloved.
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Bhai Vir Singh's epic in blank verse of a widowed queen's search for her dead husband and for God.
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The poet of the village fair and the season, who also designed the Gurmukhi type that printed Punjabi.
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Chemist, mystic and the poet of free verse who wrote 'Punjab lives on the name of the Gurus'.
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The father of the Punjabi novel, who survived Jallianwala Bagh and wrote a poem about it that the British banned.
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Professor Mohan Singh, the lyric poet of Saave Patte, who made Punjabi poetry modern and romantic.
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Poet and scholar from Kunjah near Gujrat, who translated the Quran into Punjabi and taught Punjabi at university.
Two Punjabs
1947 – today
Modernist Punjabi poet and critic of Delhi, who renewed Punjabi verse after Partition.
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Master of the Punjabi short story, whose quiet tales of village life and Partition won the Sahitya Akademi award.
▶ WatchAhmad Rahi1923 – 2002Poet from Amritsar whose Trinjan (1953) gave voice to the women of the Punjab after Partition, and who wrote Lahore's film songs.
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The novelist of Jaitu and the Malwa poor, whose Marhi da Deeva is the great Punjabi village novel.
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Poet of wit and tenderness from Gujrat, whose Punjabi poems about ordinary life are recited by heart across Pakistan.
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Poet, playwright and critic who led the revival of Punjabi writing in Shahmukhi in Pakistani Punjab.
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Novelist, poet and politician from Faisalabad, one of the leading writers of modern Punjabi in Shahmukhi.
Sant Ram Udasi1939 – 1986The Dalit revolutionary poet of Barnala, who sang of the landless labourer and was tortured for it.
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Punjabi novelist and poet from Gujrat whose books were banned under General Zia, and founder of the World Punjabi Congress.
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Dalit revolutionary poet from Samrala whose angry, plain poems spoke for the landless.
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Avtar Singh Sandhu, the revolutionary poet of the Naxalite years, killed at 37.
More poets in People
Poets and writers →
Chishti Sufi of Pakpattan and the first great poet of the Punjabi language. His hymns and saloks are part of the Guru Granth Sahib.
Lahore poet who shaped the Punjabi kafi. His shrine hosts the Mela Chiraghan, the festival of lamps.
The most loved Sufi poet of Punjab. Mocked clerics of every faith and praised the Sikh Gurus in an age of persecution.
Sufi poet of Jhang whose short verses each end with the refrain 'hu', the breath of God.
Poet of Heer, the best-known telling of the tragic love of Heer and Ranjha, completed in 1766.
Wrote the earliest surviving Punjabi telling of Heer and Ranjha, claiming to have witnessed the story himself in Jhang.
Poet of Mirza Sahiban, the tragic ballad of lovers from the Sandal Bar, still sung as a folk lament.
Sufi poet patronised by Ranjit Singh, best known for Sassi Punnu.
Poet of Puran Bhagat, the legend of the prince of Sialkot, and of a ballad on Hari Singh Nalwa.
Muslim poet whose Jangnama laments the fall of the Sikh kingdom in the First Anglo-Sikh War as Punjab's own loss.
Scribe of the Adi Granth and author of the Vaaran, which Guru Arjan called the key to understanding the Guru Granth Sahib.
Persian poet at the court of Guru Gobind Singh. His ghazals may be sung in gurdwaras.
Father of modern Punjabi literature: poet, novelist and editor in the Singh Sabha movement, whose Rana Surat Singh is the first Punjabi epic in modern verse.
The leading woman poet of Punjabi, born in Gujranwala. Her elegy for Partition calls on Waris Shah to rise from his grave and write a new verse for the daughters of Punjab.
Romantic poet of pain, the youngest winner of India's Sahitya Akademi award, for his verse play Loona.
Among the most loved Punjabi poets of recent decades, known for ghazals that mix classical form with everyday speech.
Poet-philosopher of Sialkot and Lahore, writing in Urdu and Persian, who wrote a celebrated poem on Guru Nanak and later argued for a Muslim homeland.
Urdu poet from Sialkot whose 'Subh-e-Azadi' mourned the dawn of 1947 as 'not the dawn we longed for'.
Short-story writer born near Ludhiana whose stories of Partition, such as Toba Tek Singh, are the sharpest record of its madness.
Novelist and historian from Hadali in the Salt Range. His Train to Pakistan and two-volume History of the Sikhs are classics.
Read the full poems
The verses on this site are short extracts. The complete works, in Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi, are collected here:
Folk Punjab ↗ Punjabi Kavita ↗ Rekhta Punjabi ↗