Urdu Studies Vol. 6, Issue 1, 2026

Wabā

Hasan Manzar
Introduced & translated by
Shama Askari
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23631286

Abstract: Syed Manzar Hasan is a prominent figure in Urdu Literature. He was born in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, in 1934 and received his early education in Moradabad. After 1947, he moved to Lahore with his family, where he completed his matriculation at Iqbal High School. This was followed by a BSc program at Forman Christian College, after which he joined King Edward Medical College for his MBBS degree. He continued his medical education in psychiatry at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, later obtaining additional qualifications from the Royal Colleges of Physicians & Surgeons in Glasgow, and the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. Work took him to England, Malaysia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. His travels expanded his experiences and enabled him to incorporate them into his literary writings, and he wrote while he pursued his career as a ship’s surgeon aboard the K P M motor vessel and at the Epidemic Diseases Hospital in Karachi, where he witnessed the emergence of a smallpox epidemic. As a psychiatrist, he practiced for many years in Hyderabad.

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Shama Askari is a translator and performing artist. She has been involved in the performing arts for the past twenty years. She started her acting career in theatre in 1999, with Tehrik-e-Niswan, and then moved on to television, film, and dramatized readings, performing all over Pakistan as well as India. In 2021, Shama was selected to be a part of the Transforming Narratives – Cultural Leadership Programme supported by the British Council, which provided a platform for collaboration between creatives from UK, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. She completed a project, ‘Producers of the Future: From Keighley to Karachi’, led by the Bradford Literature Festival 2021. She worked with the Adab Festival Pakistan and was the Project Director of the festival in 2022. She has worked with Dr Asif Farrukhi compiling and collecting Ibn-e-Sa’id’s work, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. She looks forward to exploring translation as a means of connecting and communicating with a wider audience. Her particular interest lies in translating established and emerging Pakistani writers whose work engages with contemporary life and subjects specific to Pakistan, including its history, politics, and culture. She was the runner-up to the Jawad Memorial Prize in 2022. She has translated the following texts: Hiroshima and Other Stories by Ibn-e-Sa’id (Lightstone Publishers; 2022); “Begum” by Ibn-e-Sa’id; published in Urdu Studies (https://urdustudies.in/; 2023); Queen Zarqa: A Transgender’s Odyssey (the Pashto Nainzak; Lightstone Publishers; 2024); “The Story of a Drop Caught in a Moustache” by Jeem Abbasi (excerpted from مونچھ میں اٹکے ایک قطرے کی کہانی; Pakistan Academy of Letters; October 2026).
Email: shamaaskari@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1032-4605

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0