Sheikh Muhammad Ikram (Urdu: شیخ محمد اکرام; 10 September[a] 1908 – 17 January 1973) better known as S. M. Ikram, was a Pakistani historian, biographer, and littérateur. He was member of the Indian Civil Service (which he joined in 1931). In 1947, when Pakistan emerged from British India, Ikram opted for Pakistan and served in the Civil Service of Pakistan. On July 1, 1966, he was appointed as director, Institute of Islamic Culture,[1] Lahore, a position he occupied until his death in 1973, at the age of sixty-four.
S. M. Ikram
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Ikram at his desk, c. 1935
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Native name |
شیخ محمد اِکرام
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Born | Sheikh Muhammad Ikram (1908-09-10)10 September 1908 Chak Jhumra, Lyallpur, British India, now Pakistan |
Died | 17 January 1973(1973-01-17) (aged 64) Lahore |
Occupation |
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Citizenship | Pakistan |
Alma mater | Government College, Lahore |
Genre | History, Biography, Urdu literature |
Notable awards | Pride of Performance Award by the President of Pakistan in 1971 |
Spouse | Zebunnisa (1910–1991) |
Children | Hamid, Khalid, and Zahid Ikram, and Shahida Azfar |
S. M. Ikram's parents were from Rasulnagar, a small town in the Wazirabad Sub-DivisionofGujranwala District in the Punjab in present-day Pakistan. His father, Sheikh Fazal Kareem, was a Qanungo, a pre-Mughal hereditary office of revenue and judicial administration; his mother was Sardar Begum. Ikram was the eldest of five brothers and two sisters. Ikram's father wanted to name his son Abdul Qadir, after the name of the editor of the first Urdu language magazine, Makhzan, but his own father (Dasaundi Khan) prevailed to name him after his friend, the assistant editor of Makhzan, "Sheikh Muhammad Ikram".[b] Ikram was married on December 30, 1936, in Gujrat to the elder of two daughters (Zebunnisa and Zeenat) of Mian Mukhtar Nabi ("Mianji"), at the time deputy director, the Punjab Agriculture Department. Ikram's wife passed her matriculation examinations from Delhi, and obtained her B.A. in Persian, English, and History from Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore. At his death in Lahore on January 17, 1973, he was survived by his wife, Zebunnisa (1910–1999), and four children.[c]
Ikram completed his primary education in Kacha Gojra (located between Faisalabad and Toba Tek Singh); his secondary education, from Mission High School, Wazirabad; his matriculation, in 1924, from Government High School (that later became Government Intermediate College), Lyallpur; from where he also passed the Faculty of Arts (F.A.) examinations in 1926. During these four years in Lyallpur (1922–1926) Ikram developed his taste and proficiency in the Persian language and poetry. From Lyallpur he moved to Lahore and graduated from Government College with a B.A. in Persian (cum laude), English, and Economics, in 1928; and an M.A. in English Literature in 1930.
Although a full-time civil servant, S. M. Ikram is more famous for his prolific output as a published writer.
After obtaining his M.A. (1930) Ikram appeared for the ICS examinations in January 1931 in Delhi. On selection, he was sent in September to Jesus College, Oxford, for two years (1931–1933). On return from England in October Ikram was posted to various positions in the Bombay Presidency (November 1933 to September 1947). At partition, he opted for Pakistan and after attending an official farewell in Puna on September 18, 1947, he emigrated to Pakistan and took up his official position on September 29, 1947. He taught at Columbia University in New York (as a visiting professor in 1953–1954, and visited again in 1958–59 and 1961–62. It was here that he made the transition from literature to history and started writing in English rather than Urdu.
A major difficulty in reviewing the works of Ikram arises from the fact that he published interim works which he revised often, in the light of his new findings: correcting mistakes, adding, deleting, and rearranging sections, expanding one volume into two (changing the title of the work in the new edition and reverting to the old title in the next edition). In many cases the revisions were sufficiently major for the original and the revised to be treated as two separate works. A study of these differences is still awaited.[e]
In their final versions, S. M. Ikram's major works in Urdu consist of biographies of two major literary figures in Urdu, and his magnum opus, the three-volume intellectual history of Muslim India and Pakistan, comparable in scope and method to Vernon Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought (1927):
With the birth of Pakistan, Ikram took up his official duties in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and his attentions turned toward nation-building both in his official duties and his personal commitments.
In August 1953 Ikram took leave for one year to take up the position of visiting professor at Columbia University, New York, which he visited again in 1958–59, and 1961–62. At Columbia he encountered an entirely different (non-Muslim, English-speaking) audience and was introduced to professional historians and their methods which, with his sympathy with Islam, facility in the Persian language, familiarity with original sources, and learning acquired over years of reading, writing, and reflecting, he found deficient:
Ikram's lectures at Columbia were the basis for three books:
At the time of his death, Ikram had been working on the draft of two books: one, a candid history written after he had retired and could write freely, entitled A History of Pakistan, 1947–1971, was finished and was to have been published by June 1973; the other, A Biography of Quaid-e-Azam, in which he wished to remedy the gap between the scholarship on Gandhi in India and that on Jinnah in Pakistan, was at an advanced stage of preparation.[i] Unfortunately in the disarray surrounding his death both manuscripts were lost.[j]
The following list is based largely on Moazzamuddin (1994, and 1990).
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