'[9] Hali composed an essay in Arabic that supported the dialectics of Siddiq Hasan Khan, who was an adherent of Wahhabism.

Her plight left a deep impression on Hali and he composed two poems on the condition of women: Munajaat-e-Beva (Supplication of the Widow) and Chup ki Daad (Homage to the Silent).

[11] In 1863, in Delhi, he was appointed tutor to the children of Nawab Mustafa Khan Shefta of Jahangirabad, a position he held for eight years.

This brought him into contact with a wide range of literature and led to him writing the first book of literary criticism in Urdu, Muqaddama-e-Shair-o-Shairi.

Hali composed four poems for this purpose: Nishat-e-Umeed (Delight of Hope), Manazra-a-Rahm-o-Insaaf (Dialogue between Mercy and Justice), Barkha Rut (Rainy Season) and Hubb-e-Watan (Patriotism).

He was granted a stipend by the Chief Minister of Hyderabad in 1887 after which he immediately took retirement from the school to be able to devote himself full-time to creative writing.

I consider this poem among those finest deeds of mine that when God asks me what did you bring with you, I will say “Nothing but that I got Hali to write the Musaddas!”[17]He also called it the "mirror of the nation's condition and an elegy expressive of its grief".

[17] In the Musaddas Hali condemned what he saw as dogmatism, obscurantism and bigotry, and he attributed the decline of India's Muslims to the discouragement of dissent and the placing of religious rituals above the spirit of religion.

At the age of 52 in 1889, Hali finally returned to Panipat, where he shared home with his wife for the remaining twenty-five years of his life.

"[3] In the same above-mentioned newspaper article, Baba-e-Urdu (Father of Urdu) Maulvi Abdul Haq is quoted as saying, "Outstanding poetry happens when there is poetic departure and a poet is able to take universal meaning out of immediate events.