This paper considers the Urdu marsiyah (elegy) and its recitation in the Muharram assemblies of premodern Awadh. Although scholarship from Religious Studies has focused on the genre’s role in ritual life, this paper investigates the performative context of marsiyah as a dynamic site of aesthetic debates, poetic rivalries, and literary innovation. The Urdu marsiyah, which commemorates the Battle of Karbala, rose in popularity in Awadh during the dynasty of the Shi’i Nawabs who ruled from the late 18th century until 1856. Asserting their independence from the Mughal empire, the Nawabs promoted Shi’i public rituals such as Muharram assemblies to foster a shared cultural ideal for Awadh’s diverse population. This paper uses accounts of marsiyah recitation found in tazkirahs (biographical dictionaries) and other contemporary sources to examine the changing relationship between marsiyah poets and their patrons and listeners. It will be shown that patronage transformed marsiyah's performative context, becoming a space for the negotiation of both religious authority and aesthetic taste, where poets such as Mir Anis (d. 1874) and Mirza Dabir (d. 1875) assumed the roles of religious functionaries and literary icons. Whereas before this period the chief setting for Urdu poetry in Mughal India had been the musha’irah (poetry gathering), in Nawabi Awadh the Shi’i majlis emerged as a rival space for the construction of Urdu’s social networks and literary standards. Marsiyah poets’ innovative compositions and spirited performance styles attracted admirers who debated the superiority of their preferred poets. As in the musha’irah, these literary rivalries reinforced ties of identity and drove creativity, with marsiyah poets engaging in duels of literary one-upmanship from the pulpit. Despite the pious context of these assemblies, fanatical supporters at times denied the ability of a rival poet’s recitation to move devotees to tears, equating matters of literary aesthetics with religious efficacy. Moving beyond narrow textual approaches, this paper aims to examine the competitive nature of marsiyah’s performative context and, more broadly, to highlight how pious texts and ritual spaces in Persianate South Asia were embedded in aesthetic debates and literary rivalries.