Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862) was the last Mughal emperor and one of the greatest Urdu poets. He was a disciple of famous Urdu poets Shaikh Ibrahim Zauq and Mirza Asadullah Ghalib. Four of Zafar's poetry collections were published prior to the 1857 War of Independence, when much of his unpublished poetry was lost. After the rebellion, he was exiled to Burma. His total present works comprise about thirty thousand couplets, covering almost all genres of Urdu poetry. Zafar died in exile on 7 November 1862 in Rangoon (now Yangon) at the age of 87 years.

This is a representative selection of Bahadur Shah Zafar's Urdu poetry. His poetry reflects not only his innate gloom and despair, which was a natural reflection of the then apparent sense of doom, but it also depicts the cultural, historical and political aspects of the society he was living in. Delhi, the great Mughal capital, had become a centre of cultural and literary activities and composing poetry was but natural for a person like Bahadur Shah Zafar who was immersed in this cultural environ. Being the king was no hindrance in the expression of his natural poetic and artistic talents. A keen sense of linguistic changes and standards, cultural nuances and innate poetic sensitivity make Zafar a remarkable poet. Of late, his works have been out of print, as well as selections of his poetry, although he is considered an important poet and at certain levels his poetry is included in curricula.