Umaru Pulavar was a Tamil Muslim

Tamil Muslim

Tamil Muslim refers to those Muslims who have Tamil as their mother tongue. There are around 500,000 in Malaysia which is 2.6% of the total population of Malaysia and 20,000 in Singapore.Tamil Muslims are largely urban traders rather than farmers...

 poet from Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Umaru Pulavar was born in 1642 in the town of Ettayapuram

Ettayapuram

Ettayapuram is a panchayat town in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, India. It is notable for being the birth place of the great Tamil Poet Mahakavi Bharathiar. Muthuswami Dikshitar, one of the triad of Carnatic music also was patronised in his final years by the ruler of Ettayapuram...

 in Thoothukudi district

Thoothukudi District

Thoothukudi District, also known as Tuticorin District, is a district of Tamil Nadu state in southern India. Thoothukudi is the district headquarters. It is also known for Pearl cultivation with abundance of pearls found in the seas of Thoothukudi...

. He is celebrated as one of the greatest Islamic Poets of India.

Early life

The forefathers of the poet came to Tamil Nadu to sell perfumes and settled in Nagalapuram, before moving to Ettayapuram where the poet was born in 1642. Umaru Pulavar’s literary talents flourished under Kadikai Muthu Pulavar , court poet of the Ettayapuram

Ettayapuram

Ettayapuram is a panchayat town in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, India. It is notable for being the birth place of the great Tamil Poet Mahakavi Bharathiar. Muthuswami Dikshitar, one of the triad of Carnatic music also was patronised in his final years by the ruler of Ettayapuram...

 Zamin. At the age of 16, Umaru Pulavar stole the national limelight by winning a literary debate with Vallai Varundhi, a renowned poet from North India. Umaru Pulavar was then made the court poet of the Ettayapuram Zamin.

Literary works

Seerapuranam considered to be one of the best works by him, depicts the history related to Prophet Mohammed Nabi

Muhammad

Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

, and it contains 5,027 poems in three ‘Kandams’ (parts), which are Vilathathu Kandam, Noobuvathu Kandam and Hijurathu Kandam. Each of the ‘Kandams’ narrates various stages of the life of Nabi.

Muthu Mozhil Malai and Sethakathi wedding poems are among his other literary works.

Umaru Pulavar Memorial

Recently the Government of Tamil Nadu has opened a memorial constructed for Umaru Pulavar. The monument; a two-storied edifice, has a tomb and prayer hall in the ground floor with a library on the top floor and would be maintained by the Department of Information and Public Relations. A collection of 1,000 literary works of Umaru Pulavar would be added into the library in a phased manner.