The greatest poet of 'naat' genre of Urdu poetry Mohsin Kakorvi, his son Noorul Hasan Nayyier, the compiler of Nurul Lughaat, one of the authentic Urdu Dictionary to date and the satirist Ghulam Ahmed Alavi 'Furqat Kakorvi' all belonged to this town.
However, in the British attack on Lucknow in 1856 and the subsequent War of Independence in 1857, the family's homes were all destroyed and Ameer was forced to flee with his family, first to the nearby town of Kakori where he found refuge with the poet Mohsin Kakorvi, and eventually to the state of Rampur, where he found great favor at the court of the ruler, Nawab Yusuf Ali Khan.