Dhakaiya Urdu

 ( Old Dhaka ) 

The late 18th-century in Dhaka hosted the migration of Mirza Jan Tapish and other Urdu poets from Delhi migrating to the urban hub after an invitation from Shams ad-Daulah, the Naib Nazim of Dhaka. Poetry and literature in Standard Urdu grew popularity in Dhaka with the presence of organisations such as the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu and the patronising of it by Dhaka's Nawabs, Sardars and Zamindars such as Khwaja Abdul Ghani and Mir Ashraf Ali. The 19th-century poet Mirza Ghalib of Agra was a close friend of Dhaka's poet Khwaja Haider Jan Shayek. The collaboration between Ghalib and Shayek was collected and compiled by Hakim Habibur Rahman, a later Urdu poet of Dhaka, in his book Inshaye Shayek. Habibur Rahman was a prominent Dhakaiya physician and litterateur whose most famous books include Asudegan-e-Dhaka and Dhaka Panchas Baras Pahle. He was the editor of Bengal's first Urdu magazine, Al-Mashriq in 1906. He later collaborated with Khwaja Adil in 1924 to found another monthly journal called Jadu. His works are celebrated for preserving Urdu, Farsi and Arabic literature, compiling them into his Thulatha Ghusala.

Shortly after the Bengali Language Movement of 1952, Urdu culture decreased significantly with many Urdu-speaking families switching to speaking Bengali to avoid controversy. During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, a number of Urdu-speaking families subsequently migrated to Pakistan. As a result, the use of Urdu has become very limited to a few families and a community south of the Dhaka railway line. Furthermore, the new nation of Bangladesh deemed their newly founded nation on Bengalis culture, which would later alienate the other ethnolinguistic communities of the country.

Often described as a wealthy and closed-off community, speakers of the dialect honour the Dhakaiya Urdu poets of the past in privacy within their . Other modern examples of usage include the University of Dhaka's dwindling Urdu department as well as the Urdu sermons and lectures given in Dhaka.

Due to globalization in the culture and entertainment sector, many Hindi language words have entered the language today.

Nazir Uddin and Muhammad Shahabuddin Sabu, an associate professor of zoology at Savar Government College, released a Bengali-Dhakaiya Sobbasi bilingual dictionary published by Taqiya Muhammad Publications in 2021. Further, the Dhakaiya Urdu Jaban editorial board published another Bangla to Dhakaiya Urdu in February 2024.

• Mirza Jan Tapish (d. 1814)
• Mahmud Azad
• Ghaffar Akhtar
• Agha Ahmad Ali (1839–1883)
• Ubaidullah Al Ubaidi Suhrawardy (1834–1885)
• Khwaja Ahsanullah (1846–1901)
• Munshi Rahman Ali Tayesh (1823–1908)
• Nawab Syed Muhammad Azad (1850–1916)
• Khwaja Muhammad Afzal (1875–1940)
• Hakim Habibur Rahman (1881–1947)
• Reza Ali Wahshat (1881–1953)
• Syed Sharfuddin Sharf Al Hussaini (1876–1960)

• Dhakaiya Kutti
• Bengali Language Movement
• Languages of Bangladesh

• "Dhaka Fifty Years Ago" Translator Hashem Sufi
• Dhaka Shahore Urdu Sangskrti ISBN 984-8319-38-7, published in February 2006;authored by Rafiqul Islam Rafiq