Rekhta
| Rekhta | |
|---|---|
| ریختہ रेख़्ता | |
 The poem of Ghalib, the notable poet of the 'Rekhta' dialect | |
| Region | Around Delhi |
| Era | 13th-18th centuries |
| Perso-Arabic (Urdu alphabet) Nagari | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | rekh1239 |
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| Part of a series on the |
| Hindustani language (or the Hindi–Urdu social dialect continuum) |
|---|
Rekhta (Urdu: ریختہ, Hindi: रेख़्ता; Hindustani pronunciation: [ˈɾeːxta(ː)]; Rēxta) was an early form of the Hindustani language. This style evolved in both the Perso-Arabic and Nagari scripts and is considered an early form of Standard Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi. According to the Pakistani linguist and historian Tariq Rehman, Rekhta was a highly Persianised variant of Hindustani, exclusively used by poets. It was not only the vocabulary that was Persianised, but also the poetic metaphors, inspired by Indian/Indic landscapes and seasons, were abandoned in favour of the Persian/Iranic ones, i.e. bahār (spring) replacing barsāt (rainy season).
The 13th century Indo-Persian Muslim poet Amir Khusrau used the term Hindavi (Persian: ھندوی, lit. 'of Hind or India') for the Rekhta dialect (the ancestor of Standard Urdu), the Persianised offshoot of the Apabhraṃśa vernacular Old Hindi, towards its emergence during the era of Delhi Sultanate, and gave shape to it in the Muslim literature, thus called "the father of Urdu literature". Other early Muslim poets, include Baba Farid, who contributed in the development of the language. Later from the 18th century, the dialect became a literary language and was further developed by the poets Mir Taqi Mir and Ghalib in the late Mughal Empire period, and the term eventually fell out of use and came to be known as Hindustani, by the end of the century.