PESHAWAR: Senior Pashto poet and pioneer of many new trends Abdur Rahim Majzoob breathed his last in an Abbottabad hospital, family sources confirmed on Monday.

His funeral was offered in his native town Sarai Naurang, Lakki Marwat where large number of poets, writers, notables and fans showed up. He was 86. He was admitted to hospital owing to hard breathing a week ago.

Abdur Rahim Majzoob was known for unique creative style with pioneering several innovative trends in Pashto literary traditions.

Majzoob being a polyglot had great mastery over English, Persian, Arabic, and Hindi and influenced a host of young Pashto literati through his innovative experiments by introducing old narratives against local characters.

Romanic Sufism was another trend as his most poems were deeply drenched in old mythological fables.

He was a graduate of the historic Islamia College Peshawar from where he had earned degree in law but he also studied several other disciplines on his own and rendered pieces of Shakespeare and John Keats into Pashto verse form in addition to contributing features and poems to newspapers and literary journals.

His popular publications included Zairh Guloona, Da Meenay Tanda, Lal Au Koti Lal, Daarul Aohaam. His complete works titled ‘Da Noor Zahooruna’ had come out in 2017. Majzoob had launched several literary organisations during his lifetime to educate young writers.

He was, in a nutshell, a blend of old and modern literary traditions, who paved way for the upcoming literati to do new experiments with their creative vision.

His love for Allama Mohammad Iqbal and Mirza Ghalib was undying and he wanted Pashto literature being enriched with treasure trove of medley of scholarship devoid of all kinds of racial, tribal and linguistic biases.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2021