تقریبا سو برس تک شرفا ئے ادب کی نگاہوں میں کھٹکتے رہنے کے باوجود گزشتہ پچاس ساٹھ برس کی مدت میں نظیر اکبر آبادی کو حسن قبول کی جو سند ملی وہ اس بات کی دلیل ہے کہ جوہرقابل کو کبھی نہ بھی زمانہ پہچانتا ضرور ہے۔ نظیراکبر آبادی کو شہرت ان کی نظموں کی وجہ سے ملی۔جن میں ہندوستان کے عوام کا دل دھڑکتا ہے۔لیکن ان کی غزلیں بھی ،جن کا ابھی تک عمیق مطالعہ نہیں کیا گیا۔ ملک زادہ منظور احمد نے"غزلیات نظیر کا نمائندہ انتخاب مرتب کرتے ہوئے" نظیر شناسی کا حق ادا کردیا ہے۔کیوں کہ نظیر شناسی غزلیات نظیر کے مطالعے کے بغیر نقش ناتمام کا درجہ رکھتی ہے۔نظیر کی غزلوں کا سب سے اہم پہلو وہ روایتی تصور حسن و عشق ہے جس کی بنیاد محض رسمی اور تقلیدی مفرو ضات پر قائم تھی۔انھوں نے اپنی غزلوں میں نہ تو محبت کی سنی سنائی رودادبیان کی اور نہ عاشق کی اس ناتجربہ کاری اور شرمیلے پن کو ابھارا جو اس عہد کی اردو غزل کا معمول بن گیا تھا بلکہ ان کی غزلوں میں عشق اپنے فطری والہانہ جذبے کےساتھ موجود ہے۔

Syed Wali Mohammad, known as Nazeer Akbarabadi, is the only poet of his kind in Urdu for a variety of reasons. He was born in 1735 in Delhi. There was huge celebration at his birth as he was the only male child of his parents born after twelve daughters. He was brought up with great care and his mother took him to Agra when Delhi fell into bad days.

Nazeer received his early education in Agra. He belonged to a prosperous family and led his childhood and early life in comfort. Following the usual practice of the day, he trained himself as a soldier. He was deeply interested in sports also. When it was the time to pick on a profession for earning a livelihood, he chose to be teacher and started teaching children at Mathura. It is said that he was a teacher to six children of Raja Vilas Rao. Later, the raja of Bharatpur and the nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah, wanted to enrol him in their courts but Nazeer did not agree to leave his place.

Nazeer was a contemporary of Meer, Sauda, Jurat, Insha, and Mushafi who stood as the vanguards of classical Urdu poetry with ghazal being nourished as the most prestigious form of poetical expression. Nazeer opened up entirely new avenues for Urdu poetry as he chose his material from life brilliantly spread all around. There is hardly any aspect of secular life that did not engage his attention. His wrote poems on all religious festivals, communal events, carnivals, sports, hobbies, and scenes and scenarios of common life which none had done before him. He evolved a diction that too entirely new for the kind of poems he wrote. There is a general misconception that Nazeer wrote only on the folk life and its various manifestations but he also wrote highly sophisticated, persianised, and creatively rich ghazals which find him a place among the elitist poets of Urdu.