Kaukab Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza (also Dr M Kaukab) was an Indian scholar of the Urdu language[1] A specialist in the literature of Awadh State during the reign of its last Nawab, Wajid Ali Shah (1822-1887), Meerza taught Urdu at Aligarh Muslim University, retiring in 1993.
[1] The Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray consulted with Meerza over many months during the writing of the screenplay for his 1977 award-winning film Shatranj ke Khilari (The Chess Players), which was set in Awadh in the period immediately preceding the Indian rebellion of 1857.
[2] Meerza was an enthusiast of snooker; he refereed many tournaments and was the founder-secretary of the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India.
[1] The last pensioner in the Awadh Pension Book of 1897 established by the British Raj and honoured by the Government of India after 1947, and the only surviving great-grandson of Wajid Ali Shah, Meerza died of complications from Covid-19 at age 87 in Kolkata on September 14, 2020.
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