Asheq Esfahani (
Persian: عاشق اصفهانی) was an 18th-century poet who was part of the literary movement Bazgasht-e adabi,[1] which advocated for a return to the fundamentals of classical
Persian poetry in protest against the excessively "unnatural" nature of the
Indian style that dominated poetry in Iran and Persian-speaking India.[2]
He was born in
c. 1700, and died in 1768 in
Isfahan.[3]
Contemporary Persian and Classical Persian are the same language, but writers since 1900 are classified as contemporary. At one time, Persian was a common cultural language of much of the non-Arabic Islamic world. Today it is the official language of
Iran,
Tajikistan and one of the two official languages of
Afghanistan.