Timsal Masud teaches Hindi and Urdu languages and literature courses and is also a textbook author, fiction writer, translator, editor, and storyteller. He completed his PhD at Lucknow University, where his research examined trends in Urdu translations of modern Persian short stories.
Masud has more than fifteen years of experience teaching Hindi and Urdu and has authored or co-author of several widely used pedagogical materials, including Complete Urdu: Beginner to Intermediate Course (Teach Yourself), Urdu-namah and Hindi-namah (intermediate and advanced textbooks), Essential Urdu Dictionary (Teach Yourself) and Urdu Dictionary for Beginners (Rekhta), and Reading Urdu: Novice to Intermediate (Routledge).
Alongside his pedagogical contributions, Masud maintains an active presence in the Hindi and Urdu literary world as a writer, editor, and translator. To broaden access to the literary legacy of Wajid Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh, he has been editing and translating a series of books by and about Wajid Ali Shah into Hindi and English. His edition of लखनऊ का शाही स्टेज (The Royal Stage of Lucknow) appeared in 2019, and his Hindi translation of Wajid Ali Shah’s biography is forthcoming in 2026.
Continuing his family’s long-standing scholarly engagement with Urdu marsiya (elegiac poetry), Masud edited the marsiya corpus of a nineteenth-century poet Mir Anis. Spanning more than a decade of archival and editorial work, this edition brings together 111 poems and features a substantial, research-based introduction that examines Urdu print culture. Published in three-volume, in both Pakistan and India, it is among the most comprehensive modern presentations of Mir Anis’s work.
Masud’s interest in manuscript cultures is rooted in a collection of rare manuscripts inherited from his grandfather. To honor and celebrate the Urdu manuscript tradition, he publishedشاہکارِ انیسؔ (A Masterpiece of Mir Anis) in 2023, a meticulously designed collector’s edition that recreates the refinement and cultivated elegance of Lucknow’s manuscript heritage.
His translations and scholarship on the history and literature of Awadh—and on Urdu literature more broadly—have appeared in The Journal of Urdu Studies (Brill), Tafheem (India), Pratiman (India), and Aaj (Pakistan). He serves on the advisory boards of several academic journals, including Columbia Journal of Asia, Tehqiq Nama (Government College University, Lahore), Tahqeeqi-o-Tanqeedi Jareeda (Government College Women University, Sialkot), and Bazyaft (Oriental College, Punjab University, Lahore).
Before joining Columbia University, Masud taught Hindi and Urdu at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Chicago.
Selected publications:
Reading Urdu: Novice to Intermediate
Co-author with Peter Knapczyk and Kusum Knapczyk. New York: Routledge. Forthcoming 2026
Hindi-namah: A Textbook for Intermediate and Advanced Hindi
Co-edited with Syed Akbar Hyder. New Delhi: Aakhar Prakashan. Forthcoming 2026
सुल्तान-ए-आलम वाजिद अली शाह (A biography of Wajid Ali Shah)
Edited and translated from original Urdu to Hindi with a useful glossary and notes. New Delhi: Aakhar Prakashan. Forthcoming 2026
انتخابِ میر (Selected verses of Mir Taqi Mir)
Edited after consulting all the major editions from 1811 to 1980 of an Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810). New Delhi, India: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu Hind. 2025
انیس: ۱۱۱ مرثیے (An Anthology of Mir Anis’s 111 elegy poems)
Edited three volume collections of Urdu marsiya poetry by Mir Anis. Karachi: City Press. 2021 and Delhi: Annugya Books. 2023
مراسلت: نیر مسعود-محمد عمر میمن (Letters: Naiyer Masud and Muhammad Umar Memon)
Edited the Urdu letters of Naiyer Masud and Muhammad Umar Memon. I collected these handwritten letters from Madison (USA) and Lucknow-Delhi (India). This project received a generous funding from COSAS (Committee on Southern Asian Studies), The University of Chicago. Karachi, Pakistan: City Press. 2022 and Delhi, India: Arshia Publications 2023
Urdu-namah: A Textbook for Intermediate and Advanced Urdu
Co-edited with Syed Akbar Hyder. Karachi: City Press. 2020
लखनऊ का शाही स्टेज (The Royal Stage of Lucknow)
Edited and translated Sahitya Academy Award winning book of Masud Hasan Rizvi Adeeb from Urdu to Hindi with a useful glossary and notes. New Delhi: Aakhar Prakashan. 2019.
Essential Urdu Dictionary
London: Teach Yourself. 2015
Complete Urdu: Beginner to Intermediate Course
Revised for a new edition. London: Teach Yourself. 2014
میر انیس کا ایک مرثیہ (One Marsiya Poem of Mir Anis)
Edited and transliterated into Hindi and Urdu with the addition of glossaries and notes. New Delhi: Arshia Publications. 2012