This paper addresses the issue of literary influence and emulation in 1720s and 1730s Delhi, during a phase in which Persianate literary styles were shifting. My foremost question is twofold: how did the khayālbandī style of Muḥammad ʿAlī “Ṣāʾib” Tabrezī (d. 1676), one of the most popular Persian-language writers for eighteenth-century Delhi, impact rekhta goʾyān (Urdu writers) of the emergent vernacular poetry scene, and how did rekhta writers impact Persian-language composition, the more popular approach of the time? To consider these questions, I focus on three poetry gatherings in which both Persian and rekhta (Urdu) verse circulated, hosted by Bindrāban Dās “Khvushgo” (d. ca. 1756), Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān “Ārzū” (d. 1756), and Saʿdullah Khān “Gulshan” (d. 1728); except for Gulshan, these hosts kept detailed taẕkiras which provide much of the critical, narrative, and literary evidence for this inquiry. In addition to contributing their own Persian-language verse, the salon hosts welcomed the words of three rekhta-goʾī poets now held to be canonical founders of Urdu literature today, though their style, which indulged amphibology or īhām-goʾī, would fall out of favor in the 1740s and 1750s. The three poets were Najm al-Dīn “Ābrū” (d. 1733), Ẓuhūr al-Dīn “Ḥātim” (d. 1791), and Sharaf al-Dīn “Mażmūn” (d. ca. 1735). Initial findings reveal Ābrū’s, Ḥātim’s, and Mażmūn’s ghazals have suffered from nearly three hundred years of neglect as inadequate labels applied in the 1740s propagated themselves with little critical engagement among analyses of subsequent literary historians. By examining the literary speech of Ābrū, Ḥātim, and Mażmūn within the context of 1720s and 1730s salons we witness that verse produced in this cohort was vital to Delhi’s literary scene and would remain so beyond its supposed fall from favor in the 1750s. One of the foremost reasons for this concerned Mażmūn, Ḥātim, Ābrū’s emulation of Ṣāʾib. Mażmūn wrote famous rekhta ġhazals based upon models from Ṣāʾib, Ḥātim considered Ṣāʾib a teacher in absentia, and Ābrū was held be a rekhta reincarnation of Ṣāʾib and was otherwise known as “the Ṣāʾib of the Age.” Ābrū, Ḥātim, and Mażmūn constructed a sociable form of literary modernism based on vernacular idioms and aesthetics, emulating the khayālbandī for which Ṣāʾib was famous and favored among Delhi’s literati. In turn, a historically informed reassessment of Persianate associational and emulative connections during 1720s and 1730s literary society helps to reconfigure the scale and scope of Indo-Persian and Urdu literary histories.