Hijab Imtiaz Ali

Hijab Imtiaz Ali was a writer, editor and diarist. She is a well known name in Urdu literature and a pioneer of romanticism in Urdu. She is also considered as the first female Muslim pilot after she obtained her official pilot license in 1936, although Zuleykha Seyidmammadova from Soviet Azerbaijan had qualified as a pilot two years earlier, in 1934. She was born in 1908 in Hyderabad, British India. She was from an aristocratic family of the princely state of Hyderabad Deccan. She started writing at a very young age. One of her best-known works "Meri Natamam Mohabbat", which is considered one of the best love stories ever written in Urdu literature, was written at the age of twelve. She married Imtiaz Ali Taj, a well-known writer and journalist who wrote for many films, dramas and radio channels. She moved to Lahore with him. She trained at the Lahore Flying Club and also took part in many competitions organized by the club. She obtained her pilot's license in 1936. The International Women’s News reported in 1939 that she had become the first Muslim woman in the British Empire to obtain an ‘A’ license as an air pilot. She wrote several books on biography, religion, philosophy and postal history, including Fifty Years of Pakistan Stamps, Gulf Post: Story of the Post in the Gulf, and The Agatya: A Journal of Ideas. She used the pen name Prisoner 2627 to refer to herself in her books. She received the Pride of Performance Award in 1959 and the Agahi Award in 2012 for her contributions to journalism. She died in 1999 of natural causes.