Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum

Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum was a 20th-century poet, scholar and translator. His pen name was Tabassum (Urdu: تبسم). He was born on 4 August 1899 in Amritsar, a city in British India (present-day Amritsar, India). He earned a master's degree in Persian from Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan. He worked for and remained with Government College Lahore for his entire career, rising to head the Department of Persian Studies. He was a pioneer of children's poetry in Pakistan and also a pioneer of translating Persian poetry into Urdu and Punjabi languages. He wrote many poems for children, such as Tot Batot, Jhoolnay, Dogona and Suwan Raine Da Sufna. He also translated many poetical works from Persian into Urdu and Punjabi, such as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the Masnavi of Rumi, the Divan of Hafiz, the Shahnameh of Firdausi and the Gulistan of Saadi. He also wrote a Punjabi translation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He received many awards and honors for his literary contributions, such as the Tamgha-e-Nishan-e-Sipas from the government of Iran, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz from the government of Pakistan and the Pride of Performance from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. He died on 7 February 1978 in Lahore from natural causes. He is regarded as one of the most influential and versatile poets of South Asian literature.