Akhlaq Mohammad Khan (16 June 1936 – 13 February 2012), better known by his takhallus Shahryar, was an Indian academic, and a doyen of Urdu poetry in India.
He retired as the head of the Urdu Department at the Aligarh Muslim University, and thereafter he remained sought after name in mushairas or poetic gatherings, and also co-edited the literary magazine Sher-o-Hikmat.
[3] His father Abu Mohammad Khan was posted as a Police Officer, though the family hailed from village Chaundhera in Bulandshahr District, Uttar Pradesh.
[8] Shahryar started his career as a writer at Hamari Zubaan, the weekly magazine of the Anjuman Tarraqqi-e-Urdu in 1961 and worked there until 1966.
His most celebrated work, Khwab Ke dar band hain, arrived in 1987, which also won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu for that year.
[10] In 2008, he became the fourth Urdu writer to win the Jnanpith Award, after Firaq, Ali Sardar Jafri, and Qurratulain Hyder.
[7] He died on 13 February 2012 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, after a prolonged illness due to lung cancer.