Siraj-ud-Din Ali Khan Arzu

He taught Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda, Mirza Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan and Najm-ud-Din Shah Mubarak Abroo who also composed Persian literature. Arzu was born in Agra. He was the son of Sheikh Hisam-ud-Din, a soldier who held many high offices in the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. He was highly proficient in Persian and Arabic, the two languages which he learned as a child. He also learned Urdu and Sanskrit. Arzu started writing at the age of fourteen, and came to Delhi in 1719. He was introduced to Nawab Qamar-ud-din Khan by Anand Ram Mukhlis. Qamar-ud-Din, who was the prime minister at that time, gave him a suitable job. Arzu used to hold mushairas at his home, and attracted many disciples including Mir Taqi Mir. In 1751, he wrote an Urdu-Persian dictionary called the Navadirul Alfaz. He migrated to Lucknow in 1754, and subsequently to Ayodhya, which was once the residence of his great-grandfather. He died in Lucknow in 1756, and was buried in the Vakilpura area of Delhi.

Khan-i Arzu is the first scholar to suggest that the Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language family tree, in his Persian-language philological treatise Muzmir ("Fruitful").