Siraj Aurangabadi (1715-1763), is the popular name of Syed Sirajuddin. He was born in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, a place named after the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. An embodiment of uncontrollable passion and impatience with the world around from the very early years of his life, Siraj turned into a true mendicant. He abandoned home, wandered in wilderness, wrote verse, and had to be brought back home in a tattered condition. He had to be kept on guard for several years till he achieved a semblance of normalcy and transformed into a Sufi, acquiring a high status in the realm of mysticism.

Siraj, the impetuous soul, began by writing verse in Persian during the very early period of his frequent bouts of deviation from the normal ways of life. He also wrote in Urdu with equal felicity. He composed his verse feverishly and lost much of it, as one overpowered by the raptures of imagination would often do. He could soon complete his Divaan of over five thousand shers. Apart from ghazal, Siraj practiced other forms of poetry also, including the long narrative verse. After the decline of the Deccan kingdoms, when Aurangabad became the literary centre, Siraj emerged as a major link between the old and the new styles of the Deccan school of poetry. Divine love is the central concern of his poetry and he spent all his life trying to unravel the mysteries of divinity in direct and metaphorical terms. His Divaan represents his metaphysical concerns and mystical preoccupations that arose from his awareness of the physical and the eerie, the secular and the religious. His poetry is a way of developing a primeval engagement with the self and it is executed with rare lyric grace.