Hafizur Rahman Wasif Dehlavi was born on 10 February 1910 in
Shahjahanpur. He was the eldest son of
Kifayatullah Dehlawi, the
Grand Mufti of India. He studied at the
Madrasa Aminia with his father Kifayatullah Dehlawi and scholars including Khuda Bakhsh and Abdul Ghafoor Aarif Dehalvi. He studied
Islamic calligraphy with Hamid Hussain Faridabadi and Munshi Abdul Ghani. Wasif was a calligrapher, literary critic, poet and an Islamic jurist. Aged 15, he started to write poetry in
Persian. His earliest poetry in
Urdu was a
marsiya about
Hakim Ajmal Khan, which appeared in the 22 January 1928 edition of
Al-Jamiat. He wrote in the
ghazal,
nazm,
qasida,
musaddas and other genres of Urdu poetry. He was a student of Saail Dehlavi and Nooh Narvi in poetry.
Jameel Mehdi would say that, "Wasif is the only poet after
Jigar Moradabadi who has an equal command over calligraphy. If he was not a poet, he would have been a great calligrapher." Wasif started his career as a teacher of
Arabic language and literature in the
Government of Delhi's education department. In 1936, his father made him the manager of Kutub Khana Rahimiya. He was appointed the vice-rector of
Madrasa Aminia in 1953. He became the rector in September 1955 and resigned in 1979. He also participated in the
Indian freedom struggle. He died on 13 March 1987 in Delhi. ==Literary works==