Ibn-e-Safi

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Ibn-e-Safi bigraphy, stories - Pakistani writer

Ibn-e-Safi : biography

July 26, 1928 – July 26, 1980

Ibn-e-Safi (also spelled as Ibne Safi) (Urdu: ابنِ صفی) was the pen name of Asrar Ahmad (Urdu: اسرار احمد), a best-selling and prolific fiction writer, novelist and poet of Urdu from Pakistan. The word Ibn-e-Safi is an Arabian expression which literally means Son of Safi, where the word Safi means chaste or righteous. He wrote from the 1940s in India, and later Pakistan after the partition of British India in 1947.

His main works were the 125-book series Jasoosi Dunya (The Spy World) and the 120-book Imran Series, with a small canon of satirical works and poetry. His novels were characterized by a blend of mystery, adventure, suspense, violence, romance and comedy, achieving massive popularity across a broad readership in South Asia.

Quotes from Ibn-e-Safi’s books

In Urdu script: آدمی سنجیدہ ہو کر کیا کرے جب کہ وہ جانتا ہے کہ ایک دن اسے اپنی سنجیدگی سمیت دفن ہوجانا پڑے گا۔ Translation: Why should man ever become serious when he knows full well that one day he will be buried along with his seriousness? (Black Picture)

In Urdu script: صرف عمل اور ردعمل کا نام زندگی ہے. منطقی جواز تو بعد میں تلاش کیا جاتا ہے۔ Translation: Life is only action and reaction. The rationalizations are added later. (AdLava)

In Urdu script: حماقت پر افسوس کرنا سب سے بڑی حماقت ہے۔ Translation: Regretting stupidity is the biggest stupidity of them all.

In English (translated from Urdu By Dr. Ahmad Safi, son of Ibne safi): Why is it that an ordinary clerk has to pass the examination for clerkship, a police constable has to go through training as a recruit before he could be commissioned and on the other hand vegetable-selling middlemen, good-for-nothing feudals and imbecile merchants go sit in the Assemblies directly and start legisltating and some even become members of the cabinet (Jungle Ki Sheriyat. In Urdu script: جنگل کی شھریت -Imran Series:102)

In English (translated from Urdu By Dr. Ahmad Safi, son of Ibne safi): I know that crimes committed by governments are not called crimes but diplomacy. A crime is only that which is committed in an individual capacity. (Jonk Ki Wapsi. In Urdu script:چونک کی ؤاپسی Imran Series)

In English (translated from Urdu By Dr. Ahmad Safi, son of Ibne safi): Nuclear and Hydrogen Bomb experiments were beyond their comprehension. They could not figure out why a person is incarcerated in a mental asylum when he turns mad and why when a nation turns mad, we start calling it a Power (Anokhay Raqas. In Urdu script: انوکھے رقاص – Jasoosi Dunya:65)

Biography

Ibne Safi was born on July 26, 1928 in the town ‘Nara’ of district Allahabad, India. His father’s name was Safiullah and mother’s name was Naziran Bibi.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Aligarh Muslim University. In 1948, he started his first job at ‘Nikhat Publications’ as an Editor in the poetry department. His initial works date back to the early 1940s, when he wrote from India. After the partition of Indian and Pakistan in 1947, he began writing novels in the early 1950s while working as a secondary school teacher and continuing part-time studies. After completing the latter, having attracted official attention as being subversive in the independence and post-independence period, he migrated to Karachi, Pakistan in August 1952. He started his own company by the name ‘Israr Publications’.

He married to Ume Salma Khatoon in 1953. Between 1960 – 1963 he suffered an episode of severe depression, but recovered, and returned with a best-selling Imran Series novel, Dairrh Matwaalay (One and a half amused). In fact, he wrote 36 novels of ‘Jasoosi Duniya’ and 79 novels of ‘Imran Series’ after his recovery from depression. In the 1970s, he informally advised the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan on methods of detection. He died of pancreatic cancer on July 26, 1980 in Karachi, which was coincidentally his 52nd birthday. He is survived by his son Omar Alboukharey. Ibne Safi when he was 18 years old.