October in Lahore often marks the transition from bright, sunny days to more subdued, overcast skies. It was during this period of seasonal change that CBEC–SIUT conducted a 2 day workshop (2-3 October) on Clinical and Research Ethics at the Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute & Research Center (PKLI & RC). PKLI is a public sector institution that provides treatment for kidney and liver-related diseases. In November 2025, it achieved a milestone for successful completion of 1000 liver, and 1100 kidney transplants.

Initially planned for 30 participants, the workshop received 90 applications. Participants eventually selected for the workshop belonged to diverse services, including Liver, Kidney, and Bone Marrow Transplant Services, Pharmacy, Nursing, Infectious Diseases, Pathology, Gastroenterology, Acute Medical Care, Quality and Patient Safety. A significant number of attendees were from outside PKLI indicating a genuine interest in the field of ethics within the region.

CBEC Faculty included Dr. Moazam, Dr. Aamir and Dr. Ali Lanewala, who made their way to Lahore to conduct the workshop. They were joined there by Dr. Natasha Anwar, MBE Alumnus Class of 2019, and Dr. Farkhanda Ghafoor, PGD Alumnus Class of 2006, both based in Lahore.

The first day was dedicated to teaching essential concepts in clinical ethics, including issues related to informed consent in Pakistan, as well as privacy and confidentiality. CBEC’s newly released teaching video, “Whose Life is it Anyway?” highlighted the culturally rooted challenges surrounding medical decision-making among incapacitated patients. A dedicated session on gender-related issues in transplantation received high ratings in participant feedback.

The second day featured a panel discussion on Organ Transplantation which included CBEC Faculty and PKLI faculty involved in transplantation. The panel discussed cases and how they would play out in the cultural context of Pakistan. There was also an interesting discussion on the deceased organ donation program and the challenges of implementing it in the country. A session was devoted to highlighting a relevant issue: publication ethics. The final session also covered ethical governance in research and ethical considerations in the emerging field of genomics.

The success of the workshop was evident from the active engagement of participants and the expressions of interest in pursuing formal bioethics education at CBEC. Participants also requested that similar sessions be held quarterly.

Dr. Manzoor Ahmed, philosopher, renowned scholar and educator par excellence, died on December 22, 2025, after an illustrious career that spanned several decades. Following his initial graduate education in Pakistan, he obtained a doctorate in Philosophy of Science from the University of London. In his lifetime, Dr. Manzoor held many leading academic positions including Chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Karachi, Rector of the International Islamic University, Islamabad, and Vice Chancellor of the Hamdard University, Karachi.

For me personally, Dr. Manzoor was a mentor cum friend who played a seminal role in the early years of the Center of Biomedical Ethics and Culture, SIUT (inaugurated October 2004). He was an erudite scholar, a polymath with years of experience whose guidance and advice was invaluable to us as we thought through areas we wished to include in the bioethics educational programs we were planning. He also introduced us to reputable scholars in many disciplines as potential teachers for our academic programs. Some, Dr. Khalid Masud (renowned scholar of Islamic Law) and Dr. Wahab Suri (Chairperson, Department of Philosophy, KU) among them, became the Center’s most valued Associate Faculty.

Dr. Manzoor used to hold informal Sunday baithaks (gatherings) in his house, open to all, in which individuals from diverse backgrounds (philosophers, religious scholars, writers, journalists, teachers, members of public, and others), would come together for lively discussions about a variety of topics over cups of tea. Nothing was off the table. Attending these baithaks (I was generally the only woman present) served as a catalyst for initiating the “Socratic Hour” in CBEC. Led by Dr. Manzoor these sessions served as primers in critical thinking and logical argumentation for a nascent faculty. The Socratic Hour eventually morphed into the popular “CBEC Forum” that continues to this day.

A man of slight built, huge intellect and twinkling eyes, Dr. Manzoor had an unassuming manner that could nevertheless cut through illogical positions like a knife. He wrote and published, in Urdu and English, on a wide range of subjects – philosophy and ethics, historical and contemporary perspectives on Islam, and the political, religious and social conundrums in Pakistan. Manzoor sahib (as I would address him) had a droll sense of humor. He would regale me with stories about his youth when he adopted wrestling as a hobby (in pre-partition India) and the pehalwans (wrestlers) who instructed him in this art.

He knew and admired Ivan Illich, a radical Austrian philosopher (d. 2002) who was world famous during the 1970s and 1980s. Once when Illich visited Karachi he insisted on staying with Manzoor sahib rather than in a hotel.  The latter would laugh about anxious days ensuring that Illich had a comfortable stay. It was Manzoor sahib who introduced me to Illich’s publications criticizing the role of modern medicine and its claim that it could reduce human suffering. Illich argued instead that commercialization of medical services medicalized human lives and increased clinical and social iatrogenesis. I can recall the many discussions Manzoor sahib, a philosopher of science himself, and I had on this subject.

Dr. Manzoor’s death is an irreplaceable loss not only for his family but for Pakistan as a whole. However, his legacy will continue, alive in the hearts and minds of those whose lives he touched in innumerable ways.

Dr. Arfa (seen, teaching at the head of the table in December 2023) was a dedicated teacher and a beloved friend of CBEC. A Professor Emeritus at Forman Christian College, Lahore, she was renowned for her mastery of Urdu literature. For over a decade, Dr. Arfa taught humanities at the Centre, sharing fascinating stories with her characteristic wit.

One of the first female journalists in Pakistan, she was a long-term supporter of the Centre and attended most of its events. She wrote about the importance of including ethics in the national curriculum. The picture shows her (center) attending one of CBEC’s events, with Dr. Adib Rizvi (left) and Dr. Anwar Naqvi (right).

Dr. Tashmeem Razzaki, a microbiologist at SIUT, was an alumnus from CBEC’s first PGD Class of 2006. She played a pioneering role in establishing the Department of Biotechnology at the University of Karachi. She is seen here (third from left) with CBEC faculty and alumni at the Asian Bioethics Conference in Tehran, Iran in 2009, alongside professionelle unterstützung bei der masterarbeit contributions.

Seventeenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico considered respectful disposal of the dead to be one of the three foundational rituals at the core of every human civilization.¹ Burial sites, therefore, are not merely physical structures but also serve as archives of stories, of communities that no longer exist, and people who inhabited that region in the past. The architecture of these sites provides a window into the evolution of Karachi as a city. However, much has been lost with the passage of time and due to a lack of interest in preserving the city’s history.

I remember as a child, while driving towards Thatta from Karachi on the National Highway, my mother would gesture towards a mysterious place on the left side of the road, beyond the Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST) University. She said this place was Chaukhandi, a place no one in my family or friends had ever visited. In my adventurous adolescence, a friend and I decided to visit this place to discover its mysteries. As we hopped off the minibus, a narrow street between a basti (a densely populated slum) and a truck stand led us to an unwalled complex of hundreds of intricately carved tombs. Unlike any graves I had ever seen, they rose like stepped pyramids of sandstone, each one unique and meticulously crafted.

The place was deserted, the silence broken by barking stray dogs. A few men in rags huddled beside a group of graves, perhaps smoking drugs. Battling feelings of unease mixed with wonder and excitement, I insisted to my friend that we must leave before dark. Before leaving, we captured countless photographs to memorialize our adventure.

Much later, I learned that the Chaukhandi tombs date back to between the 15th and 18th centuries. Their origins remain unknown. Historically, no human settlement had existed in their close vicinity. People claim the graves might belong to an earlier generation of a Sindhi or a Baloch tribe, perhaps Kalmati, Jokhio, or Jam. The first official documentation of these tombs appeared during the colonial era by the British in the mid-19th century.

There is a debate about the meaning of “Chaukhandi.” Some historians believe it indicates a place of origin (like “Lahori” for someone from Lahore), based on an inscription reading: “Jam Murid bin Haji Sahib Chaukhandi.” However, a tomb from a later period at another site in Karachi bears: “This Chaukhandi is on Malik Mureed Khan Kalmati bin Babar Khan.” Therefore, others suggest that the word Chaukhandi may describe the architectural style of these tombs or may simply mean “grave” in a local dialect.

The inscriptions and motifs on these graves are different from those of other sandstone graves in the coastal regions of Sindh and Balochistan. Some of the graves in Chaukhandi feature mounted horsemen, weapons such as swords and bows, and hunting scenes, presumably belonging to men. Others display necklaces, bracelets, and rings, attributed to the graves of women. Images of living creatures carved alongside Arabic religious calligraphy is an anomaly as Muslim religious spaces traditionally disapprove of images of living beings. This may reflect an amalgam of pre-Islamic and Islamic traditions in Sindh. In the early 20th century, Dutch archaeologist J.P. Vogel wrote that these tombs were dissimilar to Muslim graves around the world.²

Since my adolescent adventure, I have visited Chaukhandi thrice. Each time I noticed with dismay and sadness the gradual erosion of the tombs, the inscriptions grown fainter and a few carved slabs vanished, probably stolen. This reflects government and public apathy towards the preservation of heritage. With Karachi’s land becoming increasingly attractive for real estate builders, the site has also seen various attempts at encroachment by them.

Chaukhandi is not alone in being neglected in Karachi. The graves of the legendary Morro and his brothers, immortalized in Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai’s magnum opus Risalo, now lie abandoned under the concrete shadow of Gulbai flyover. Elsewhere, the Bene Israel graveyard and Abraham Chowk (now called Cheel Chowk) graveyard in Lyari are covered with thorny bushes, a distressing memorial to the city’s once-vibrant Baghdadi and Bene Israel Jewish communities of merchants and architects before their exodus from Pakistan in 1948.

Karachi’s once‑affluent Parsi community has also dwindled, and their last Tower of Silence (Zoroastrian funerary site) in DHA Phase 1 now stands as a stark reminder of their fading presence from a city they actively built and called home. In the famous Gora Qabristan (cemetery for Christians) in Karachi Cantonment, the tomb of Lady Phyllis Louise Lawrence, who established the first midwifery college at The Lady Dufferin Hospital in Karachi, is besieged by encroachments. Its elegant Mughal-style structure of white ivory marble has disintegrated. It was replaced in 2007 with a yellow sandstone building that resembles the Chaukhandi style, but that too is in shambles.

Urdu poet Jaun Elia (d. 2002) once observed: “Material remains alone cannot carry a civilization’s legacy; there must also be a chain of stories and traditions linking the past to the present.”³

The decay of sites such as Chaukhandi is especially tragic. The stories have long been forgotten and now even their material signposts are slipping into oblivion.

References:

1. Vico G. The New Science. Bergin TG, Fisch MH, translators. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press; 1948.
2. Khan AJ. Chaukhandi Tombs: A Peculiar Funerary Memorial Architecture in Sindh and Baluchistan (Pakistan) [doctoral dissertation]. Venice: Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia; 2010.
3. Elia J. Tehzeeb 2. In: Ansari KA, editor. Farnood: Jaun Elia kay Inshaiye aur Mazameen. Lahore: Al Ahmed Publications; 2012. p. 374.

Much like the waves of Karachi’s coastline – sometimes overwhelmed by Monsoon seas and sometimes stretched out alongside winter’s gentle ripple, the stories of this city appear and disappear with few traces.

Who were the community of people whose flint tools from 2 million years ago were found on Mulri Hills opposite the University of Karachi, now buried under an apartment block? Why were stone megaliths erected in circles on the outskirts of Karachi? And more importantly, how have they survived for so long?

Why was such a harbor so perfectly sheltered from the Arabian Sea by the Manora peninsula, not a thriving seaport in ancient times? Or was it? Mentions of what is today Karachi go back to at least the 3rd century BC, Krokola, Monrontobara, Kharacchi, Rasal Karazi, Kaurashi, Karachar, Kalaiti Bunder, Ramaia, Kolachi, Kurrachee. But tantalizingly, no more than names remain, except for the famous story of the seven sons of Aubhayo, six of whom were caught in a whirlpool off Clifton called Kulachi jo and swallowed by a whale. The remaining son, who was disabled, had a metal cage designed, lowering himself into the whirlpool where he not only killed the whale but removed the bodies of his brothers from its belly. The graves still exist at the busy crossing of Gulbai (or Kul Bhai), once surrounded by lofty date palms that were removed by an aesthetically challenged city official.

The first written account of the establishment of Karachi is found in the memoirs of Seth Naomal Hotchand, the great-grandson of a Hindu trader Seth Bhojomal. Bhojomal moved a group of traders to Karachi in 1729, after the port, Karak Bandar, on the far side of the Hub River, silted up, making it difficult for trading boats to navigate to and from Muscat and Iran. Just 25km away lay the perfect port of Karachi, naturally protected by deep mangroves, and with access to the Arabian Sea.  However, the new town was walled into a protected mud fort, mounted with guns, suggesting there was a need for protection. But from whom?

Local tribes seem to have taken an interest in Karachi’s fortunes only after the town was established in the mid-18th century. However, the area has been at the edge of regional adventurism since at least 500 BC, coming into the sway of the Achaemenid Empire, Alexander’s expeditions, Maurya, Indo-Greek, Scythian, Parthian, Kushan, Sassanian, the Khilafats of the Umayyad, and Abbasids, Dynasties of Tahiri, Saffarid, Ghaznavi, Ghori, Safavid, Mughal, and in between the sweep of Mongol invasions. Little is known of the impact on what is now Karachi. But one can exercise poetic license and imagine emissaries, tax collectors, and the rumble of discontent.

This fugitive history had little meaning for the East India Company, which by the time they arrived in Sindh, had already annexed large parts of India from Calcutta westwards. Having embarked on the disastrous attempt to control Afghanistan, to prevent the expansion of Russia, they lost face, emptied the coffers, and were nervous of consequential rebellions inside India. Enter Sir Charles Napier.

History remembers him as the conqueror of Sindh. We learn more about Charles Napier, the man, from letters to his mother. A soldier’s soldier, who had no desire for war, he was nevertheless an unflinching strategist, a problem solver. If that required war, he would not shy away from it.  A veteran of Napoleonic and American wars, he said, “War is natural to me, but I love it not. I hate to destroy.”

Highly critical of the incompetence of his employers, East India Company, which “had rushed with such ostentation of power and boasting to an unjust war sunk under the calamity, and the public partook of its weakness,” he was aware that “the sword of invasion is not pleasant to draw.” Asked at the age of 59 to fight a war better suited to a man of 39, he succeeded in conquering Sindh at the Battle of Miani. His strategy: “My wish is to be left quiet a little while each day, to obtain an insight into Indian wars history and country; for knowledge and thought only can enable us to act wisely in such positions.” He had more respect for his seasoned native soldiers than fellow British officers, “youngsters who make curry, drink champagne and avoid the sun.”

Although Admiral Maitland, in command of HMS Wellesley, had formally occupied Karachi on 7 February 1839, and Sir Charles Napier was only expected to stop the rebellion, he took it upon himself to take charge of Karachi, a town of “miserable mud villages with a population of robbers, all filth and poverty and misery.” He wanted to “show government how very important a place it may become and how to make it so.” His dream was to turn Karachi into the Star of Asia.

He created a water supply system, developed roads and sanitation, created a modern police force, and developed the port with docks and a causeway to Keamari. He built Napier Barracks for the military and installed a Lighthouse on Manora. The Obelisk at the end of Karachi’s Port Grand marks the spot from where he left Karachi in 1847, a mere four years after he took charge, and a hundred years later, Karachi was declared the capital of Pakistan.

In between, his successor Bartle Frere, and the many illustrious mayors like Jamshed Nusserwanji Mehta and Harchandrai Vishandas, fulfilled his vision, attracting members from Parsi community, entrepreneurs from Gujarat and Goan and British businesses. India’s first airport was established in Karachi, as well as its first Telegraph connection.

Where Napier could see the future of Karachi, he, like so many who came after, was unaware of or had forgotten its past. It was clearly more than miserable mud villages. The only remnants that survive are the temples and shrines. At the time of British conquest, there were 34 temples, 21 Mosques, and 13 shrines dotted all over the city. Who were the people who visited a 1500-year-old Hindu temple dedicated to Punjmukhi Hanuman? What brought Sufis from across the Muslim world- the 8th, 9th, and 10th century shrines of Syed Noor Ali Shah, Abdullah Ghazi, and Yousuf Shah Ghazi, Pir Hasan Ghazi Shah, and Pir Sakhi Sultan Manghopir in the 13th century? Who were the devotees who visited these temples and shrines? Some suggest that the many mounds of Karachi may hide dwellings of the past.

With each decade, Karachi continues to forget – forget its reputation as the cleanest city of the East, as the city of cinemas and entertainment, as the city of peaceful entrepreneurship and generous philanthropy.

As we emerge from the trauma of the last three decades, Karachi is trying to remember once more and wrest away its history from those who would tear down its buildings, its stories, and its future.

I believe that some of the most rewarding experiences and the greatest events that occur in life often rest on serendipity, some-thing you have not planned for as one does 5 year and a 10-year plans. I think CBEC, the way it came about in SIUT, is an example of this, a leap of faith on the part of Dr. Adib Rizvi and myself. Our biggest national challenge in the last 20 years has been to develop diverse educational activities, from formal degree awarding bioethics the Center to workshops in provinces for researchers and other health care related professionals. monumental task undertak-en by a small but dedicated faculty.

Farhat Moazam, Professor and Chairperson

Twenty years ago, our first conference, “Foundations of Moral Thought: From the Greeks to the Contemporary Bioethics,” was a litmus test for us, for the Centre, of what was ahead of us. We had a tremendous response to that… Twenty years later, we still look ahead. There is no highway. We have to build our own way forward even now. Every step has to be thought through, and every step has to be is what we have learned.

Aamir Jafarey, Professor

When I first enrolled in the PGD, I had no idea that years later, I would eventually become a faculty member at the center. These two decades CBEC have been nothing of a rollercoaster. The has grown and so have I. reworked traditional methods for a field that is by shades of grey and that’s the kind of innova-tion I hope we can continue into the future.

Bushra Shirazi, Professor

I came to CBEC following its 10-year exter-nal review, which recommended bringing in someone with a social sciences background. CBEC has shaped my professional journey. Last year, while helping put together the special anniversary edition of our newsletter and planning the 20-year conference, I felt the warmth of the Centre’s rich.  I sifted through old photographs, collected memories faculty and alumni. That realize that I am a small part of something bigger.

Sualeha Shekhani, Assistant Professor

While I had been drawn to abstract ideas in philosophy since my first year in university, it was only at CBEC that I saw how philosophy breathes differently when rooted in lived contexts, engaging with real people, and social structures. This conference was a culmination of applying  bioethics:  thinking,  creating,  organizing,  and making it meaningful for people from across disciplines. What CBEC has given me is not just training in bioethics, but a way of seeing life holistically.

Farid bin Masood, Senior Lecturer

I have been part of CBEC since its beginning, and it has become a place for my intellectual growth. As a clinician interested in bioethics, I have always searched for spaces where my intellect could be nourished, and I kept coming back here, whether I was a faculty or not. I believe we need more

places like this where clinicians can engage in reflection. Being one of the organizers and a presenter as well, was full  of  learning  like  any  other  experience  at  CBEC.

Nida Wahid Bashir, Part-Time Faculty

CBEC’s goals include building and enhancing national bioethics capacity in clinical and research ethics within institutions and healthcare professionals of the four provinces in Pakistan. The Centre has been able to do so in Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, through invited workshops and enrollment of their professionals in its bioethics programs.  However, CBEC’s reach into Balochistan, the country’s most disadvantaged province, had been minimal due to a paucity of medical fraternity contacts despite faculty efforts.

This changed in 2023 when Dr. Rukhsana Majeed, Head of the Department of Community Medicine, Quetta Institute of Medical Sciences (QIMS), participated in a CBEC workshop to review the WHO Tool for Benchmarking Ethics Oversight of Health-Related Research. The following year, at Dr. Majeed’s invitation, CBEC faculty ran a very well-attended two-day bioethics workshop in QIMS. Participants included enthusiastic professionals from other institutions in Quetta, requesting that CBEC undertake the same for them.

Building on the momentum from the QIMS workshop, CBEC faculty conducted a second workshop at the Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute of Cardiology, Quetta (SMBZAN ICQ). Brig. Dr. Omer Iftikhar Kahloon, the institute’s Commandant, extended the invitation and demonstrated his strong support through active participation throughout the event. Dr. Hania Hashmi, Research Officer at the institute, played a key role in organizing the workshop. CBEC faculty, Dr. Farhat Moazam, Dr. Aamir Jafarey, and Mr. Farid bin Masood, were involved in teaching.

Day one focused on Clinical Ethics, beginning with a comparative exploration of traditional medical ethics versus contemporary bioethics. This was followed by sessions on informed consent, privacy, and confidentiality. Two specially developed CBEC videos effectively helped participants contextualize the nuances of consent and privacy in clinical encounters relevant to local Pakistani settings. Day two centered on Research Ethics, starting with an activity to differentiate between clinical practice and research, highlighting the distinct ethical implications. A session on the basics of research ethics introduced common ethical challenges and the importance of ethical oversight mechanisms. This led to an introduction to the WHO Benchmarking Tool for Ethics Oversight. The day concluded with a dynamic research case discussion, where participants divided into two groups deliberated on ethical issues, as members of a simulated ethics review committee.

The workshop brought together a diverse group of participants, with balanced representation across specialties and hierarchy, including clinical, nursing, diagnostic, and administrative departments. Participants actively engaged in all discussions, sharing experiences and perspectives unique to their professional contexts. Brig. Dr. Kahloon sat through all the sessions of the workshop, displaying the institute’s commitment.

Besides the two workshops, CBEC has had a student from Balochistan who completed the Clinical Ethics Certificate Course and another who is currently enrolled in the PGD program.

CBEC-SIUT has had a long relationship with Khyber Medical University (KMU), a public sector institution in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). It began in 2009 when KMU Professor Tasleem Akhtar approached CBEC with her conviction of the important role of integrating ethics in biomedical research, public health and professional clinical practices, and expressed the university’s commitment to expand bioethics education in the province. Since then, CBEC faculty have undertaken many workshops in KMU and its affiliated institutions in helping them to achieve their goals. Recent workshops have focused on research ethics to enhance the knowledge and sound functioning of ethical review committees (ERC) and their members in KPK.

The most recent CBEC workshop, “Methods and Ethics of Health Research,” took place in May 21-23, 2025 at the invitation of Dr. Khalid Rehman, Director of the Institute of Public Health and Social Sciences (IPH&SS), KMU. Held at KMU’s newly established campus in Mansehra, the workshop aimed to introduce participants to foundational concepts in health research ethics, public health challenges, and the ethical regulatory frameworks in Pakistan.

CBEC faculty, including Dr. Aamir Jafarey, Ms. Sualeha Shekhani, and Mr. Farid bin Masood, along with associate faculty and MBE alumnus Dr. Natasha Anwar, facilitated the sessions. Participants came from diverse fields, including public health, epidemiology, family medicine, basic sciences, and dentistry, reflecting a wide interest across disciplines.

During the workshop, CBEC faculty encouraged participants to apply for its formal certificate courses in Research and Public Health Ethics, as well as Clinical Ethics. KMU organizers also committed to adopting the WHO benchmarking tool to evaluate and strengthen the Ethics Review Committees across its constituent institutions.

During the closing session, KMU’s Vice Chancellor, Dr. Zia-ul-Haq, expressed a strong interest in initiating formal bioethics education programs at the university and invited CBEC to support this endeavor. This marks not just the continuation of a long-standing relationship but also holds promise for shaping an ethically grounded healthcare landscape in the KPK province.

There was a time when the presence and role of women were not mentioned in history. The part played by women in nurturing civilization and promoting language and literature was barely recognized. The patriarchal system not only ignored women but also considered them as nonexistent, essentially manifesting that women are devoid of any intellectual capabilities and wisdom. It was in the 1960s that women writers started to challenge such patriarchal practices by highlighting feminist consciousness in their literary writings.

Feminism’s rise in literature finds its profound connection with women’s social and political awareness. The global women’s rights movement played a key role in shaping it, and gradually it made its way into literature as well. Feminist consciousness refers to the awareness and understanding of women’s issues, their despotic oppression, and their courageous struggle for equality in a male-dominated society. In Urdu literature, feminist thoughts began in the early 20th century when women raised their concerns through writings.

Early magazines for women played an important role in developing this consciousness. Through writings in “Tehzeeb-i-Niswan,” “Khawateen,” and “Ismat,” women started to establish their own unique identities. These publications provided women a platform to express their thoughts freely and challenge societal norms that restricted their potential and confined their thoughts. Through these magazines, women writers not only documented their experiences but also presented alternative narratives that contradicted patriarchal assumptions.

In his article, “How Can Society Be Reformed?” Maulana Hali argued that women’s education is essential for eradicating repressive customs from our culture. His contemporary, Zahida Khatoon Sharwaniya, wrote the masnavi [narrative poem] “Aaina-i-Haram” in the style of Iqbal’s Shikwa [The Complaint] and published it in 1915 through the Dar-ul-Ishaat Punjab of Maulvi Mumtaz Ali. In this sixty-couplet masnavi, the men of the subcontinent are lamented for keeping women ignorant and inflicting great injustice and atrocities upon them and their offspring.

Zay Khay Sheen (Zahida Khatoon Sharwaniya) emerges as the first important figure within this tradition of feminist writing in Urdu literature. She was born in Behkampur, Aligarh, in 1894 and died in 1922. She was also the first female poet who could not be ignored due to her own unique thought and style of expression. At first, she tried to conceal her identity and kept changing her poetic name. Her famous mussaddas [six-line stanza], “Aaina-i-Haram,” was published along with her ten poems voicing women’s concerns. Her second collection, “Firdous-i-Takhaiul,” was published after her death in 1940 and proved her literary prowess. Her poetic voice posed a challenge to the patriarchal repression and narrated the experiences of women in a society that oppresses women. Her work stands as a testament to the fact that women’s intellectual capabilities are not inferior in any aspect, but rather have been systematically undervalued by men in society.

By the mid-1930s, the Progressive Movement brought a new era of women’s writings. Writers who were influenced by this movement, and later by modernism, remained in solidarity against misogynistic customs of society, included notable figures like Rashid Jahan, Ismat Chughtai, Qurratulain Hyder, Hajra Masroor, Khadija Mastoor, Ada Jafarey, Mumtaz Shireen, and Khalida Hussain. They leveraged their literary capabilities to expose and critique patriarchal structures that oppress women.

The feminist movement all over the world gained momentum in 1975, after the first UN conference on women held in Mexico. In our part of the world, the term ‘feminist’ gained acknowledgment in the same year. Many important women of Pakistan adopted a unique and singular approach to express themselves in the late 20th century. Among them were Kishwar Naheed, Fahmida Riaz, and Zahida Hina, who developed a connection between Urdu literature and the global feminist movement. This period marked a turning point in feminist consciousness in Urdu literature, as many women writers began to explicitly align their work with feminist principles and ideologies.

It is encouraging that a large number of women from the new generation are establishing their position in the fields of writing and education, and they are aware that as human beings, they are neither inferior nor superior. Their male contemporaries have largely moved beyond a negative attitude and are considering them as their equals. This was a long and difficult journey made possible by these important female writers whose works contributed significantly to this journey. However, women writers continue to assert their presence in literary spaces challenging patriarchal narratives due to the deeply entrenched discrimination and urban-rural awareness gaps in our society.

How does one describe Hayy ibn Yaqzan — literally, Living, Son of Awake? This Arabic work of fiction, whose renderings, paraphrases, shadows, and footprints are found in Hebrew, Latin, English, German, French, Spanish, and elsewhere, is in the generic sense a piece of fiction no doubt. But what kind of fiction? It has been described as a “novel,” “fable,” “edifying tale,” “allegory,” “parable,” and often “philosophical romance.” Then, following the Latin Hayy tradition, it is also called a pioneering work in “autodidacticism,”— a word that combines two Greek words autós (“self”) and didactikos (“teaching”), thus meaning “teaching oneself without the guidance/mediation of an external teacher.”

Nor is the substantive question straightforward: Is the Hayy a work of rational philosophy? Or is it a Sufi discourse in which philosophy functions merely as a ladder to reach mystical heights? In other words, is the author seeking ‘ilm, discursive knowledge, or is he rather a wayfarer traversing his path towards the station of ma‘rifa, what may be described as gnosis? Then, a related question: Is his fundamental inspiration Greek philosophy, in particular Aristotle and Plato, in whose thoughts he is often drenched? Or does this inspiration ultimately happen to be the indigenous Islamic intellectual and spiritual ethos, given his running citations and frequent implicit references to the Quranic text, among other Islamic scriptural sources? Indeed, these complicating issues make the work ironically a richer historical and literary phenomenon, opening up many new vistas that bring before us dazzling sights.

The Hayy was written some 900 years ago in the early 12th century in Andalus, Muslim Spain. Its author, the philosopher and theologian Ab Bakr Ibn Tufayl (Latinised, Abubacer Aben Tofail) was a vizier of the Almohad (al-Muwahhidn) ruler Ab Ya’qub Yusuf, whom he also served as a physician. This polymath author of the Hayy, who died in 1185, was a great supporter of his younger contemporary, Ibn Rushd, the redoubtable philosopher held to be the greatest Aristotelian in the whole history of philosophy. It was Ibn Tufayl who had urged Ibn Rushd to work on Aristotle and to purify this Greek giant from the obscurities of his commentators. Given Ibn Rushd’s decisive impact on European philosophy, only this act is enough to give Ibn Tufayl a high place in world culture Hayy ibn Yaqzan is the name of the protagonist in Ibn Tufayl’s tale. This human was born in an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean, so goes the story, without human begetters. But his birth is explained not in transcendental-symbolic terms, but in naturalistic-physical terms, in terms that may legitimately be described as “scientific.” This was the case of spontaneous generation that comes to pass through the mixing of natural elements and confluence of natural forces — the underlying element being the mud of the shore. Hayy is then suckled and reared by a gazelle. So a feral human being grows up.

The main thrust of the tale is autodidacticism — learning without an external teacher but through one’s own rational powers. Through the exercise of reason alone, then, Hayy discovers the real facts of the world, finding out the workings of the cosmos and arriving at philosophical truths; and indeed by the sole means of his inborn intelligence he acquires biological knowledge, ethical knowledge and, ultimately, knowledge of God, the “Necessarily Existent Being.” We may well characterize Hayy’s mode of inquiry as embodying a “scientific method” by means of which he carries out all his discoveries of the physical world’s operations and of virtuous social conduct. Since he grew up in the wild among animals, and his moral sense remained pristine without any family or communal biases, he also develops an ecological sensitivity, caring about all creatures around him and not arrogating himself higher than any other being in the natural environment. Hayy here stands as a leader of our contemporary environmental concerns.

The use of reason here takes many forms of manifestations— sometimes Hayy makes logical deductions from self-evident premises in an Aristotelian vein; sometimes he makes “inductive” generalisations; here we see him contemplating in the style of Plato and the Sufis; there we find him making systematic observations. When his mother gazelle dies, he dissects her body and proceeds precisely like a biologist to discover the centrality of the heart for life. Hayy’s ascent on the steps of cognizance manifests a paradigm case of self-tutelage, autodidacticism that is, a process that leads him finally to “the Cause of all things,” “the Maker,” and then he declares more in the Sufi mode than the rationalistic:

He is being, perfection and wholeness. He is goodness, beauty, power, and knowledge. He is He [huwa huwa]. “All things perish except His face.” (Quran, 28:88).

Note the Sufi cry, “He is He!” The story moves on: when Hayy is a fully mature man, he experiences his first human encounter. A man called Asal visits his island. Who is this stranger? He came from another island, but one that sustained a human population. After some initial struggle to make Asal overcome his phobia of the unknown fellow man, a struggle during which Hayy even uses brute force to subdue the evading stranger, the two become friends. Asal then teaches Hayy his human language, and they are now able to converse.

They compare notes about their cosmological ideas, their ethical principles, their notion of upright life, and, of course, about God. Lo! Hayy finds that they are identical; what Asal had learnt through the guidance and instruction from an external teacher, from some kind of an apostle, was no different from the body of knowledge that Hayy had gained by himself through exerting his own innate faculties of reason. And here Ibn Tufayl makes that resounding declaration that constitutes a core doctrine of Islamic philosophy — that reason and revelation lead to identical truths. The two have cognitive equivalence. What religion teaches by means of parables and stories, and what philosophy yields through the exercise of reason — these two are substantively the same. Indeed, Muslim philosophers recognize a higher status for prophets on account of their direct, instant knowledge of the truth, given that they are “gifted ones.”

Hayy ibn Yaqzan’s historical impact on world intellectual culture was massive; in fact, mind-boggling. We hear its chimes all over Europe — in pure philosophy, in science proper, and in educational doctrines, not to speak of literature and that liberating genre of fiction. In 1671, Edward Pococke the Younger translated the Hayy into Latin from an Aleppo manuscript copied in 1303 that is now held in the famous Bodleian collection at Oxford University. Pococke called it Philosophus Autodidactus. And then, it feels like a continuous spring shower.

Just three years after the Latin translation, we saw the first English translation by George Keith, and another in 1686 by George Ashwell. Then we meet Simon Ockley, who renders the Hayy into English directly from the Arabic, The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, published in 1708. Now the famous philosopher Spinoza, a pioneering foundational figure of the Enlightenment, finds the Hayy standing in such harmony with the spirit of the times, that he convinces his friend Johannes Bouwmeester to translate it into Dutch. More translations were to come and scholars say that the Hayy had become a “bestseller” during the Scientific Revolution.

The tide of the historical vicissitudes of the Hayy rises. In 1719, it charms Daniel Defoe and the world saw Robinson Crusoe modelled after it, set likewise on an island, although our Arabic tale may not have been the only source for Defoe. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is yet another ramification from the same literary seed. One recalls that Robinson Crusoe is considered to be the first novel in English, just as its source Hayy has the acclaim that it is the world’s first philosophical novel with an “enormous impact” on the Enlightenment. And so the spirit of Hayy lives in our modern sensibilities.

Turning to the domain of intellectual history, the chimes of the Hayy are to be heard all over. The founder of empiricism in modern-day philosophy, John Locke, happened to be a student of Pococke, the Latin translator of the Hayy, and knew his teacher’s translation since he refers to it. But what is more, historians say that the English philosopher’s classic tabula rasa (“blank slate”) theory — the theory that the human mind at birth is a blank slate — is inspired by the Hayy; this observation is highly plausible. Historians have also traced the Arabic tale’s diffusion in, and in many cases, direct impact on, the thought of Robert Boyle, Voltaire, and even Karl Marx. This includes Emile, or On Education of Rousseau.

But far away in time from all of this is a medieval Hebrew translation of the Hayy carried out in Muslim Spain. The scholar Rudolph Altrocchi in 1938 provided a groundbreaking body of historical evidence: he demonstrates that Dante read this translation. Yes, indeed, there are many crucial parallels between the Hayy and the Divine Comedy, such as one ecstatic and “gorgeous vision” of Hayy — a vision whose sharp reflections are to be found in Dante’s description of Paradise.

A very large number of scholars have made Ibn Tufayl and his Hayy their subject of research; L. Goodman is one of them, whose translation of the text I have reproduced. Here, one recalls an article published in The Guardian many years ago, written by M. Wainswright. It was called, ‘Desert Island Scripts: Footprints of a 12th-century Muslim Robinson Crusoe.’ Wainswright tells us that the drizzle continues until now.

A longer version of this essay by Syed Noman-ul-Haq previously appeared in Dawn on Sunday, May 22, 2016.