Saib Tabrizi

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Saib Tabrizi (Persian: صائب تبریزی, romanized: Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī, میرزا محمّدعلی صائب تبریزی, Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿalī Ṣāʾib, Azerbaijani: صائب تبریزی) was an Iranian poet, regarded as one of the greatest masters of a form of classical Persian lyric poetry characterized by rhymed couplets, known as the ghazal. He also established the "Indian style" (sabk-i Hind) in the literature of his native language, Azerbaijani Turkic, in which he is known to have written 17 ghazals and molammaʿs.

Saib was born in Tabriz, and educated in Isfahan and at some time around 1626, he traveled to India, where he was received into the court of Shah Jahan. He stayed for a time in Kabul and in Kashmir, returning home after several years abroad. After his return, the emperor of Persia, Shah Abbas II, bestowed upon him the title King of Poets.

Saib's reputation is based primarily on some 300,000 couplets, including his epic poem Qandahār-nāma (“The Campaign Against Qandahār”). (The city of Qandahār or Kandahar in today's Afghanistan was in Saib Tabrizi's lifetime a long-standing bone of contention between the Mughal rulers of India and the Safavid rulers of Persia - both of whom were at different times the poet's patrons - until definitely given over to Persian rule as a result of the Mughal–Safavid war of 1649–53.)

Saib Tabrizi's “Indian style” verses reveal an elegant wit, a gift for the aphorism and the proverb, and a keen appreciation of philosophical and intellectual exercise. Saib was especially well known for his Persian panegyric poetry during the reigns of Persian Emperors Safi, Abbas II and Suleiman.^{[citation needed]}

A line from Saib's poem on Kabul provided the title for Khaled Hosseini's 2007 novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns.