Hafiz Mehmood Khan Shirani

Hafiz Mehmood Shirani (1880-1946) (حافظ محمود خان شیرانی) was a prominent Indian researcher and Poet(though his poetry work is very less) of British era. He started teaching Urdu at Islamia College, Lahore in 1921. In 1928 he moved to Oriental College, Lahore. He was a researcher and his popular theory was “Punjab Mein Urdu” which make him famous in Urdu searching field. Beside this he was the father of famous Urdu poet Akhtar Sheerani.Hafiz Mahmood Khan SheranI, died in his native town of Tonk.

Theory about origin of Urdu

Hafiz Mahmood Sherani is credited with the theory that says Urdu was born in Punjab. He says since Mahmood Ghaznavi had conquered Lahore and Muslims stayed there for some 200 years before invading Delhi, Urdu must have taken shape during that period and, in a way, the Punjabi language gave birth to Urdu. Some two centuries later, Mr Sherani says, Muslim conquerors brought this new language to Delhi with them. He also enlisted some similarities between Urdu and Punjabi.
Of course there are some identical traits that lend credulity to this theory, but Mr Sabzwari and Masood Hussain Khan proved this theory was incorrect.
Aside from historical aspects, they showed that in addition to similarities between the two languages, there were a large number of syntactical and morphological differences that proved that Urdu was not Punjabi’s daughter. In fact, Mr Sherani was not the first to reach this conclusion and before him some renowned linguists and scholars such as Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, T. Graham Bailey and Mohiuddin Qadri Zor had expressed similar views, though Mr Sherani was the first to try to thoroughly prove the theory.