Birth—July 1910
Where—Delhi

Education:
BA (English) Aligarh
MA (English) Oxford

Death: January, 1994

In exile my sun has set. —Ahmed Ali,
“In Exile I Remember My People and Feel Sad”

Ahmed Ali,  the distinguished Pakistani short-story writer, novelist, poet, translator, critic, anthologist, teacher, diplomat, and businessman, died on Friday, 14 January 1994, in Karachi. He had been in ill health for several years. Writing in both Urdu and English, Ali produced a number of innovative literary and scholarly works which have received acclaim from critics in both South Asia and the West.

Born in Delhi on 1 July 1910, the first child of Syed Shujauddin, a civil servant, and Ahmad Kaniz Asghar Begum, Ali started his formal education at age five by learning Quranic recitation. After his father died in 1919, he went to live with his father’s elder brother, Syed Bahauddin, a man of circumscribed vision, attitude, and taste. Ali started his study of English in 1922 at Wesley Mission High School, Azamgarh, and in 1923 enrolled in Government High School, Aligarh, where he met and became life-long friends with Mohsin Abdullah, son of the dynamic, liberal champion of Muslim women’s education, Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah, and the entire Abdullah family, which included the eldest daughter, Rashid Jahan.

In 1926 Ali matriculated at Aligarh Muslim University, where, by chance, he enrolled in an English poetry class with Eric C. Dickinson, a minor Oxbridge poet serving as Professor and Chairman of the Department of English, who then became the young man’s mentor. Ali also met another of Dickinson’s students, Raja Rao, who was preparing to study in France. At this time Ali published his first English poem in Aligarh Magazine. In 1927 he transferred to Canning College, Lucknow University, where he published his first English short story, “When the Funeral Was Crossing the Bridge,” in the Lucknow University Journal in 1929. The following year he graduated first-class, standing first, in English Honors from Lucknow University, having achieved the highest marks in English in the history of the university. He also received the prestigious White Memorial Scholarship.

-Read more-

• Ahmed Ali in Conversation: An Excerpt from an Interview by Carlo Copola
• Professor Ahmed Ali by Alamgir Hashmi
• Face of a Friend: Ahmed Ali 1910-1994 by K Natwar Singh
• Remembering Ahmed Ali by Rakhshanda Jalil
• Ahmed Ali: the borders of language by Mehr Afshan Farooqi
• Ahmed Ali and Emergence of Muslim Fiction in English by Amin Malak
• The Truths of Fictions By Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

Bibliography

Major Works

Twilight in Delhi. London: Hogarth Press, 1940.
Ocean of Night. London: Peter Owen, 1964.
Purple Gold Mountain. London: Keepsake Press, 1960.
The Prison House: Short Stories Karachi: Akrash Publishing, 1985.
Rats and Diplomats. Delhi: Orient Longman, 1985; Karachi
The Golden Tradition: An Anthology of Urdu Poetry New York and London: Columbia University Press,1973.
Al-Qur’an: A Contemporary Translation Karachi: Akrash Publishing, 1984. Revised ed. 1986.

Short Stories

‘Mahavaton ki ek Rat’, Humayun (1931)
Angare, (ed. with Zaheer, Jahan, Mahmuduzaffar)   (1932)
Hamari Gali (‘Our Lane’) (1942)
Qaid Khana (‘Prison House’) (1944)
Maut se Pahle (‘Before Death’) (1945)

Poetry

Purple Gold Mountain. London: Keepsake Press, 1960.
First Voices, Twelve Poems. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Selected Poems. Gulbarga, India: JIWE Publications, 1988.

(For comprehensive list of works, see The Annual of Urdu Studies)

Awards and Honors

1930 White Memorial Gold Medal and scholarship for securing a
first-class and standing first in order of merit in B.A (Honors).
1931 Jhalawar Gold Medal for standing first in M.A.
1933-1936 Co-Founder, Progressive Writers Movement of India.
1979 Founding Fellow, Pakistan Academy of Letters.
1979 Honorary Citizen, State of Nebraska, USA.
1979 Member, University of Karachi Senate (appointed by the
Governor of Sind).
1980 Sitara-e Imtiaz (Star of Distinction), awarded by the
Government of Pakistan.
1993 Doctor of Literature (honorary), the University of Karachi.