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The Persian language was crucial in the formation of a common language of the Central, North and Northwest regions of the Indian subcontinent. Following the Mughal conquest of India and the resulting vast Islamic empire, especially in the North and middle areas, a hybrid language of Hindi and Persian began to form around the 10th and 11th centuries, one that would eventually be known as Urdu ("tent" in Turkish in allusion to the army barracks of visiting troops). It grew from the interaction of (often Persian speaking) Muslim soldiers and native Hindu peoples, merging with the local Prakrit and Sanskrit-based Khari boli (standing tongue), a proto-Hindi dialect of the north. Soon, the Persian script and Nasta'liq form of cursive was adopted, with additional figures added to accommodate the Indian phonetic system, and a new language based on Indian grammar with a vocabulary largely divided between Persian (and indirectly some Arabic) and Hindi. Elements peculiar to Persian, such as the enclitic ezāfe, and the use of the takhallus, were readily absorbed into Urdu literature both religious and secular.

Urdu soon gained distinction as the preferred language in Persian courts of India and to this day retains an important place in literary and cultural spheres. Many distinctly Persian forms of literature, such as ghazals and nazms, came to both influence and be affected by Indian culture, producing a distinct melding of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritages. A famous cross-over writer was Amir Khusro, whose Persian and Hindvi (proto-Hindi-Urdu) couplets are to this day read in India. Persian has sometimes been termed an adopted classical language of India aside Sanskrit due to its role in Indian tradition.