Niaz:
"Much has been written on the origin of Urdu. The word ‘urdu’ itself is Turkish and means ‘army’ or ‘camp’; our English ‘horde’ is said to be connected with it. The Muslim army stationed in Delhi from 1193 onwards was known as the Urdu or Urdu-i-Mu’alla the Exalted Army.
It is usually believed that while this army spoke Persian, the inhabitants of the city spoke the Braj dialect of Hindi. There is no reason however to think that Braj was ever the language of Delhi. The people of the capital spoke an early variety of that form of Hindi now known as Khari Boli, which is employed today in all Hindi prose and in most Hindi poetry. The idea that the army spoke Persian also requires reconsideration.
Mahmud of Ghazni annexed the Punjab in 1027 and settled his army of occupation in Lahore. The famous scholar, Alberuni of Khiva (973 1048) lived there for some time while he studied Sanskrit and prosecuted his researches into Hinduism. Mahmud’s descendants held the Punjab till 1187, when they were defeated by their hereditary foes under Muhammad Ghori who had already sacked Ghazni. The first sultan of Delhi was Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, a native of Turkistan, but a servant of Muhammad Ghori and afterwards his chief general.
He captured Delhi in 1193 and on the death of his master in 1206 took the title of Sultan. From that time foreign troops were quartered in the city, Urdu is always said to have arisen in Delhi, but we must remember that Persian-speaking soldiers entered the Punjab and began to live there, nearly 200 years before the first sultan sat on the throne of Delhi.
What is supposed to have happened in Delhi must, in fact, have taken place in Lahore centuries earlier. These troops lived in the Punjab; they doubtless inter-married with the people and within a few years of their arrival must have spoken the language of the country, modified of course by their own Persian mother tongue.
We can picture what happened. The soldiers and people met in daily intercourse and needed a common language. It had to be either Persian or Old Punjabi, and the people being in an enormous majority, their language established itself at the expense of the other.
For some time the soldiers continued to talk Persian among themselves and the local vernacular with the inhabitants of the country; but ultimately Persian died out, though it continued to be the language of the court, first in Lahore, and later in Delhi, for hundreds of years after it had ceased to be ordinarily spoken in the army.
In the Persian which the invaders used there were many Arabic and a few Turkish words; a large number of these were introduced into India.
What happened in Lahore and Delhi resembled in many points what was happening in England after the Norman conquest.
The Normans, speaking a dialect of French, came into an Anglo- Saxon-speaking country and made French the court language. Though they greatly influenced the speech of the conquered country, yet within three centuries they had lost their own language, and England today speaks English, blended, it is true, with French.
The changes produced in English by the coming of the Normans have probably been exaggerated, but in any case they were greater than those produced in Punjabi and Hindi by the Muslim army.
Apart from the incorporation of many loan words the influence was remarkably small. These languages remained practically unchanged in their pronouns, verbs, numerals and grammatical system. The chief change was in vocabulary. In all this English corresponds very closely to Urdu.
Muhammad Ghori seized the Punjab in 1187 and his troops under Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, after consolidating their position, swept on to Delhi, but they cannot have left a hostile Muslim army in the rear.
We may be certain that the descendants and successors of the original invaders joined them, and that the two armies marched together to Delhi, which was taken, as we have seen, six years later. When, 12 years later still, the new emperor was installed in Delhi, a large proportion of his soldiers must have spoken by preference a language very like what we think of as early Urdu (the remainder speaking Persian). The basis of that language was Punjabi as it emerged from the Prakrit stage, and it cannot have differed from the Khari of that time nearly as much as the two languages differ today.
The important fact is that Urdu really began not in Delhi but in Lahore, and that its underlying language was not Khari (much less Braj, as often stated), but old Punjabi. Later on this first form of Urdu was somewhat altered by Khari as spoken round Delhi, but we do not know that Braj exercised any influence at all.
The formation of Urdu began as soon as the Ghaznavi forces settled in Lahore, that is in 1027. At what time they gave up Persian and took to speaking Punjabi Urdu alone, we cannot tell, probably it was a matter of a very few years. 166 years later the joint Ghori and Ghaznavi troops entered Delhi. In a short time Urdu was probably their usual language of conversation.
We must therefore distinguish two stages: (1) beginning in 1027, Lahore-Urdu, consisting of old Punjabi overlaid by Persian; (2) beginning in 1193, Lahore-Urdu, overlaid by old Khari, not very different then from old Punjabi, and further influenced by Persian, the whole becoming Delhi-Urdu."
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Now, you are free to believe whatever you want. Personally, I don't care whether Urdu was born in Delhi or Lahore. But other people should have the patience to look at the evidence from other historians and linguists objectively rather than arrogantly and outrightly dismissing them, like you did with Mr T. Grahame Bailey. Btw, this book was written in 1932, when independence had not taken place, that too by a white British historian. I see no political motive for writing this book.