writings in the Urdu language of the Muslims of Pakistan and northern India. It is written in the Perso-Arabic script, and, with a few major exceptions, the literature is the work of Muslim writers who take their themes from the life of the Indian subcontinent. Poetry written in Urdu flourished from the 16th century, but no real prose literature developed until the 19th century, despite the fact that histories and religious prose treatises are known from the 14th century. More colloquial forms of writing gradually displaced the classically ornate literary Urdu in the 19th century; in the 20th century, Urdu literature was stimulated by nationalist, pan-Islāmic, and socialist feeling, and writers from the Punjab began to contribute more than those from the traditional Urdu areas of Delhi and Lucknow.