If you plan a visit to Patna, the capital of Bihar in north India, guidebooks will tell you that it is little more than “a noisy, congested city” that “shows few signs today of its former glory.” These blunt assessments reflect a broad present-day consensus. A century or so ago, however, the city had quite a different reputation. In 1926, a poet named Safi Lakhnavi visited Patna for an annual gathering of Shi‘a Muslims. As he did every year, he recited a long poem in Urdu in honor of the host city. Invoking Patna's ancient past as Pataliputra, the capital of the great Mauryan Empire, he moved through Mughal times and into the present, praising the city's elegance and the sophistication and talent of its people:

…