Ibn-e-Safi


Ibn-e-Safi was the pen name of Asrar Ahmad, a best-selling and prolific fiction writer, novelist and poet of Urdu from Pakistan. The word Ibn-e-Safi is an Arabic 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 independence of British India in 1947.
His main works were the 125-book series Jasoosi Dunya and the 120-book Imran Series, with a small canon of satirical works and poetry. His novels were characterised by a blend of mystery, adventure, suspense, violence, romance and comedy, achieving massive popularity across a broad readership in South Asia.

Biography

Ibne Safi was born on 26 July 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 Agra 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. He also studied at Allahabad University where he was class fellow of Prof. Dr. Mohammad Uzair and one year senior to Mustafa Zaidi . After the independence 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, Sindh, 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. 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 26 July 1980 in Karachi, which was coincidentally his 52nd birthday. He was buried in Paposhnagar Graveyard in Nazimabad Karachi.
At the time of his demise, Ibn-e-Safi had left four sons and three daughters. The sons include Dr. Isar Ahmed Safi, Doctor of Medicine, an ophthalmologist, who died on 3 July 2005 after suffering from a high grade fever; Abrar Ahmad Safi, a mechanical engineer with a marine engineering background, who lives in US; Dr. Ahmad Safi, a mechanical engineer holding a PhD, who lives in Karachi, Pakistan; and Iftikhar Ahmed Safi, an electrical engineer, who lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Nuzhat Afroz, Sarwat Asrar and Mohsina Safi are the three daughters.
All these sons and daughters belong to his first marriage that was held in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 1954. Later, he also married a young woman named Farhat Ara who lived in North Nazimabad. Karachi. She remained under consistent oblivion till her death in 2011.

Works

Ibne Safi's prose work can be classified into two categories:
Ibn-e-Safi started writing poetry in his childhood and soon earned critical acclaim in whole South-Asian community. After completing his Bachelor of Arts, he started writing short stories, humour and satire under various names such as "Siniki Soldier" and "Tughral Farghan." In the Nakhat magazines, he published several satirical articles which commented on various topics ranging from politics to literature to journalism. His early works in the 1940s included short stories, humour and satire.
According to one of his autobiographical essays, someone in a literary meeting claimed that Urdu literature had little scope for anything but sexual themes. To challenge this notion, Ibn-e-Safi began writing detective stories in January 1952 in the monthly Nikhat, naming the series Jasoosi Dunya.
In 1955, Ibn-e-Safi started the Imran Series, which gained as much fame and success as Jasoosi Dunya. Ibne Safi's novels – characterized by a blend of adventure, suspense, violence, romance, and comedy – achieved massive popularity by a broad readership.
So strong was Ibne Safi's impact on the Urdu literary scene that his novels were translated into several regional languages. It was not unusual for Safi's books to be sold at black market prices in Pakistan and India, where they were originally published every month.
The settings in Ibne Safi's novels are such that the reader is never told the national origin of the heroes. Since Jasoosi Duniya was created before the independence of the subcontinent, the names of the characters and their locales suggest that the novel takes place in India. The advent of the Imran Series came post-independence, and the reader is set up to assume that the narrative is situated in Pakistan. Besides their native countries, the main characters of both Jasoosi Duniya and Imran Series have had adventures around the world – Spain, Italy, England, Scotland, Pacific Islands, Zanzibar, South Africa, the United States, and various other places. Considering that Ibne Safi never left the Indian Subcontinent, the detailed descriptions he provides of the diverse localities are surprisingly accurate.
Many a time, Ibne Safi created fictitious settings for his stories. The magical web of his writing is so captivating that these fantasy lands have become real in the minds of readers. Avid fans of the author are experts on the people and cultures of Shakraal, Karaghaal, Maqlaaq, Zeroland, and many other imaginary domains. In cities around India and Pakistan, one can find discothèques, bars, nightclubs, and hotels named after venues found in Ibne Safi's novels. Some places worth mentioning are Dilkusha, Figaro, Niagara, Tip Top, High Circle, etc.
Besides humor and satire, he also wrote some short adventures, namely Baldraan Ki Malika, Ab Tak Thee Kahaan?, Shumal Ka Fitna, Gultarang, and Moaziz Khopri. In these adventures, Ibne Safi takes the reader to various fictitious, exotic lands of his own imagination.
Ibne Safi wrote the story and screenplay for a film 'Dhamaka' based on his novel 'Bebakon ki talash'. The film did not get the publicity and fame which it deserved and remains mostly forgotten.
In 1959, Ibne Safi started writing Aadmi Ki Jarain, a book based on human psychology. However, it remained incomplete due to his illness.

In translation

The first English translations of Ibne Safi's mystery novels began appearing in 2010, with The House of Fear from the Imraan Series, translated by Bilal Tanweer and published by Random House India. In 2011, Blaft Publications in association with Tranquebar released four more novels, this time from the Jasusi Duniya series, translated by the highly acclaimed Urdu critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi.

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?
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.
In Urdu script:
حماقت پر افسوس کرنا سب سے بڑی حماقت ہے۔

Translation: Regretting stupidity is the biggest stupidity of them all.
In English :
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 legislating and some even become members of the cabinet
In English :
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.
In English :
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

Dhamaka – A film by Ibn-e-Safi

"Dhamaka" was produced by Muhammad Hussain Talpur, based on the Imran Series novel Baibaakon Ki Talaash. Actor Javaid Sheikh was introduced as Zafarul Mulk, the main character. Muhammad Hussain Talpur played the role of Jameson and actress Shabnam played the role of Sabiha. Imran and X-2's team was not shown in the movie. The voice of X-2 was recorded by Ibne Safi himself. Actor Rahman played the role of a Villain for the first time. The film featured a rendition of a ghazal by Habib Wali Muhammad, "Rah-e-talab mein kaun kisi ka", which was written by Ibn-e-Safi. The movie was released on 13 December 1974.

Poetry


Ibn-e-Safi was also a poet. He used to write poems under the pen name of "Asrar Narvi". He wrote in various genres of Urdu poetry, such as Hamd, Na`at, Manqabat, Marsia, Ghazal, and Nazm. His collection of poetry, Mata-e Qalb-o-Nazar, remains unpublished.
Following is the list of his Ghazals:
Ibne Safi died on 25 July 1980 at 5.00 AM. He was buried in Paposhnagar graveyard in Karachi on 26 July 1980. The body was laid in the grave by Mushtaq Ahmed Qureshi. Funeral was attended by a large number of citizens, admirers, journalists etc. The details of his last moments is mentioned in an article named Bayad Ibne Safi.

Influence

The Bollywood screenwriter and lyricist Javed Akhtar was greatly inspired by Ibn-e-Safi's Urdu novels, which he grew up reading as a child. Akhtar was particularly influenced by the Jasoosi Dunya and Imran series of detective novels, such as The House of Fear. He was influenced by the fast action, tight plots and economies of expression in the Jasoosi Dunya detective thrillers. He also remembered Ibn-e-Safi's novels for their fascinating characters with catchy memorable names, which left a lasting impression on Akhtar, whose Bollywood scripts later employed some of Ibn-e-Safi's narrative techniques, such as giving catchy names to the characters, his sense of plot, and speaking styles. Akhtar said that Ibn-e-Safi's novels taught him the importance of larger-than-life characters, inspiring famous Bollywood characters such as Gabbar Singh in Sholay and Mogambo in Mr. India.