novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...
.
Life and career
Hussain was born in an Arain family in the village of Sujaanpur, near the town of Dhariwal, in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, in pre-partition
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. He migrated to
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
after partition in 1947. He chose
Islamic history
The history of Islam concerns the political, social, economic, military, and cultural developments of the Islamic civilization. Most historians believe that Islam originated in Mecca and Medina at the start of the 7th century CE. Muslims r ...
as the inspiration for his novels.
Among the notable writers of his time,
Ibn-e-Safi
Ibn-e-Safi (26 July 1928 – 26 July 1980) (also spelled as Ibne Safi) ( ur, ) was the pen name of Asrar Ahmad ( ur, ), a fiction writer, novelist and poet of Urdu from Pakistan. The word Ibn-e-Safi is an Persian expression which litera ...
, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Shafiq-ur-Rehman were his popular contemporaries. He lived most of his life in Pakistan and died on 2 March 1996.
Naseem Hijazi died on 2 March 1996 at the age of 81 in
Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...
, Pakistan.
Writing
Naseem Hijazi used historic settings as the background for his novels and based most of his work on
Islamic history
The history of Islam concerns the political, social, economic, military, and cultural developments of the Islamic civilization. Most historians believe that Islam originated in Mecca and Medina at the start of the 7th century CE. Muslims r ...
, demonstrating both the rise and fall of the Islamic Empire. His novels ''Muhammad Bin Qasim'', ''Aakhri Ma'raka'', ''Qaisar-o Kisra'', and ''Qafla-i Hijaz'' describe the era of Islam's rise to political, militaristic, economic, and educational power, while ''Yusuf Bin Tashfain'', '' Shaheen'', ''Kaleesa Aur Aag'', and ''Andheri Raat Ke Musafir'' describe the period of the Spanish
Reconquista
The ' (Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid ...
.
In ''Akhri Chataan'', he depicts the
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
and his destruction of the Khwarizm Sultanate.
Hijazi wrote two sequential novels on the
British Raj
The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
, and described the shortcomings of many nations within India after the collapse of the
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
. The novel ''Mu'azzam Ali'' starts a little before the
Battle of Plassey
The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23 June 1757, under the leadership of Robert Clive. The victory was made possible by the defection of Mir Jafar, ...
. The lead character, Muazzam Ali, joins the fight against the British with the army of
Siraj-ud-Daula
Mirza Muhammad Siraj-ud-Daulah ( fa, ; 1733 – 2 July 1757), commonly known as Siraj-ud-Daulah or Siraj ud-Daula, was the last independent Nawab of Bengal. The end of his reign marked the start of the rule of the East India Company over Be ...
. The story progresses as the character moves from one place in India to another in search of lost glory and freedom. He takes part in the third battle of Panipat and finally settles in
Srirangapattana
Srirangapatna is a town and headquarters of one of the seven Taluks of Mandya district, in the Indian State of Karnataka. It gets its name from the Ranganthaswamy temple consecrated at around 984 CE. Later, under the British rule the city wa ...
, which is growing in power under the towering personality of Haider Ali. The book ends around the death of Ali. The second book on the battles in the same area, ''Aur Talwar Toot Gayee'' (And the Sword Broke), is about Haider's son Sultan Tipu, where the same character is finding his dreams being fulfilled in Tipu's valiant endeavours against the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
. The book culminates in Sultan Tipu's sad and untimely martyrdom.
Hijazi also wrote the novel ''
Khaak aur Khoon
''Khaak Aur Khoon'' (Urdu: ) is a 1950 Urdu historical novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives fro ...
'', which details the violence caused by religious tensions between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus at the time of the partition of
British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
and the
Independence of Pakistan
The Pakistan Movement ( ur, , translit=Teḥrīk-e-Pākistān) was a political movement in the first half of the 20th century that aimed for the creation of Pakistan from the Muslim-majority areas of British India. It was connected to the per ...
in 1947.
Although some historians have accused him of distorting historical facts in his novels, he has influenced many readers inside and outside Pakistan.