This paper examines the criticism of Munīr Lāhorī (1610–44) regarding the early modern literary style of tāza-gū'ī (speaking anew) through his unedited commentaries on the qasidas of ʿUrfī Shīrāzī (1556–90). Munīr is critical of the Iranian poet's overly complex style, ungrounded in the literary tradition as he perceived it, and of developments in Mughal courts that began to favor Iranian literati over their Indian counterparts. His philological criticism of ʿUrfī's qasidas and the promulgation of tāza-gū'ī elucidates the methodologies of Safavid-Mughal literary criticism and illustrates how the prominence of Iranian figures in South Asian courts influenced the discourse on early modern Persian literary developments.
