Anjuman Taqdees e Adab hosts Mushaira in Houston

HOUSTON: Anjuman Taqdees e Adab, which was established to promote Urdu literature, hosted a literary evening in Houston with Sohail Saqib, a renowned Urdu poet from Saudi Arabia who is on US tour.

A large number of literary personalities, poets and scholars attended the event. Mushaira was presided by Ayaz Mufti who is also the Nazim of Taqdees e Adab.

Program started with the recitation of Quran, which was performed by Imran Lyallpuri, a naat was recited by Ayaz Mufti.

The event started with welcoming remarks by Khalid Khwaja, which was followed by a sumptuous dinner. Houston’s literary and social activist Shamshad Wali made a small presentation, after which Mushaira officially started.

Local poets including Tarannum Shabbir, Ms Rana Naushad Hussain, Indian senior poet Naeem Siddiqui, Salman Jalaly, Ms. Nilofur Afshan, Altaf Bukhari, Basit Jaleeli, Syed Younus Aijaz, Ghazanfar Hashmi, Ms Tasneem Abidi, Khalid Khwaja and the guest of honor Sohail Saqib presented their poetry.

Sohail Saqib presented hamd, naat and beautiful ghazals for which he received accolade from the audience.

Local and guest poets were also very well received by audience. This was twentieth mushaira session hosted by Taqdees e Adab in Houston.

This is in addition to forty online mushairas which they periodically arrange. A good number of attendees had to stay standing due to lack of seats in the hall.

Houston locals also gave a warm welcome to Sohail Saqib. Dallas renowned poet Younus Aijaz was the chief guest and Pakistan’s famed poet Ghazanfar Hashmi was the guest of honor.

The event was presided by Abdul Hameed Qureshi, who in his presidential address appreciated the efforts of the group in promotion of Urdu literature and language.


The mushaira where ghazals, Nazams and other forms of poetry was presented was liked by audience. Sohail Saqib thanked all the participants said that he is impressed by the amount of work people are putting in for promotion of Urdu.

Addressing the audience, he said that wherever he goes in US, he sees people are putting lot of efforts in service to Urdu language He said The way he is treated by people in US will make it a memorable trip for him.