After the decline of Mughal power which led to the blinding of Shah Alam II in 1788, Insha decided to try his luck in Lucknow.
After some years, Insha moved on to the court of Saadat Ali Khan, the new ruler of Avadh, an association which writers such as Muhammad Husain Azad believe led to a decline in his poetry.
His chief works are in his diwan of Urdu and Persian ghazals, as well as a volume of poems in rekhti (imitating the colloquial speech of women).
He wrote ghazals, rubaiyat (quatrains), qatat in many languages, several Urdu and Persian masnavis,[1] odes, satires, and also tried his hand at unconventional forms such as the riddle and the magic spell.
[3] Muhammad Husain Azad in Aab-e-Hayat, his critical study of Urdu poetry, compiles a list of Insha's work which also includes such eccentricities as a hunting poem about Saadat Ali Khan in Persian, satires complaining about heat and flies, a poem about a wedding of elephants, and a masnavi on the subject of cock-fighting.