Ghalib (Urdu: غاؔلِب‎), born Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan (Urdu: مِرزااسَدُاللہ بیگ خان), 27 December 1797 – 15 February 1869),[1] was a prominent[2] Urdu and Persian poet during the last years of the Mughal Empire. He used his pen-names of Ghalib (Urdu: غالِب, ġhālib means "dominant") and Asad (Urdu: اسَد, Asad means "lion"). His honorific was Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula. During his lifetime, the already declining Mughal empire was eclipsed and displaced by the Colonial British Raj and finally deposed following the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1857, are some of the events that he described through his work.[3] Most notably, he wrote several ghazals (Urdu: غزلیات) during his lifetime, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. Ghalib, the last great poet of the Mughal Era, is considered to be one of the most famous and influential poet of the Urdu and Persian languages. Mirza Ghalib was born in Kala Mahal, Agra[5] into a family descended from Aibak Turks who moved to Samarkand (in modern-day Uzbekistan) after the downfall of the Seljuk kings. His paternal grandfather, Mirza Qoqan Baig, was a Seljuq Turk who had immigrated to India from Samarkand during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748–54)[6]. He worked in Lahore, Delhi and Jaipur, was awarded the sub-district of Pahasu (Bulandshahr, UP) and finally settled in Agra, UP, India. He had four sons and three daughters. Mirza Abdullah Baig and Mirza Nasrullah Baig were two of his sons.[citation needed] Mirza Abdullah Baig (Ghalib's father) married Izzat-ut-Nisa Begum, an ethnic Kashmiri,[7] and then lived at the house of his father-in-law. He was employed first by the Nawab of Lucknow and then the Nizam of Hyderabad, Deccan. He died in a battle in 1803 in Alwar and was buried at Rajgarh (Alwar, Rajasthan).[8] Back then, Ghalib was a little over 5 years of age. He was raised by his Uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan. At the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh (brother of the Nawab of Ferozepur Jhirka).[citation needed] He soon moved to Delhi, along with his younger brother, Mirza Yousuf, who had developed schizophrenia at a young age and later died in Delhi during the chaos of 1857.[8] None of his seven children survived beyond infancy. After his marriage, he settled in Delhi. In one of his letters he describes his marriage as the second imprisonment after the initial confinement that was life itself. The idea that life is one continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends, is a recurring theme in his poetry. One of his couplets puts it in a nutshell. The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same Before the onset of death, why should man expect to be free of grief?