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Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy
‐
Diplomat, poet and art critic
Other names
Shahid Suhrawardy
Place of birth
Location(s)
OX1 3EX
United Kingdom
Place of death
Karachi, Pakistan
About
As a student at Oxford, Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy helped Robert Bridges (poet laureate) select the 'oriental' poems for The Spirit of the Man. On 29 November 1915 Suhrawardy, with D. H. Lawrence and Philip Arnold Heseltine, visited Lady Ottoline Morrell (a photo of which, taken by Lady Ottoline, is available in the National Portrait Gallery). Other guests recorded in the visitors' book that day include Aldous Huxley.
Suhrawardy was a poet and art critic, who also worked as a diplomat. He was the son of Justice Sir Zahid Suhrawardy and Khujesta Akhtar Banu and nephew of Abdullah Al-Mamun Suhrawardy, who had also studied at Oxford. Suhrawardy had graduated from Presidency College, Calcutta before sailing for England. After graduating from Oxford, he taught English at the Imperial University of St Petersburg and at the Women's University in Moscow. Amongst his students was Alexander Kerensky, the Prime Minister of Russia. Suhrawardy was a member of the producers' committee at the Moscow Art Theatre and worked with the composer Igor Stravinsky. He witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1919 and then moved to France. He returned to India in the 1920s to pursue research in art, teaching in Calcutta and Hyderabad. He also translated works from Russian and Chinese into English.
His younger brother, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who was at Oxford at the same time, was Prime Minister (the post now called Chief Minister) of Bengal in 1946 and Prime Minister of Pakistan, 1956–7. Due to similar sounding names and the same initials with his brother, Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy is often known as Shahid Suhrawardy. He should also not be confused with his uncle Sir Hassan Suhrawardy.
Ahmed Ali (friends and co-founders of Pakistan PEN), Robert Bridges, D. H. Lawrence, Philip Arnold Heseltine (aka Peter Warlock), Aldous Huxley, Basanta Kumar Mallik (students at Oxford together), Lady Ottoline Morrell, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jamini Roy, Kiran Shankar Roy (students at Oxford together), Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (his brother), Rabindranath Tagore (met when Tagore visited Oxford in 1913).
Faded Leaves (London: J. M. Baxter, 1910)
'Narcisse-Mallarméen; Chinoiserie: Samainesque', in Oxford Poetry 1915 (Oxford: Blackwells, 1915)
(trans.) Bartold, V. V., Mussulman Culture (Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1934)
Essays in Verse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937)
Prefaces [Lectures on Art Subjects] (Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1938)
(trans. with Liu Yih-lung) Lee, Hou-chu, Poems of Lee Hou-chu (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1948)
'The Writer and His Freedom', in Ahmed Ali (ed.) Pakistan PEN Miscellany 1 (Karachi: Kitab, 1950)
The Art of the Mussulmans in Spain, with introduction by Naz Ikramullah Ashraf (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Hosain, Shahid (ed.) First Voices: Six Poets from Pakistan: Ahmed Ali, Zulfikar Ghose, Shahid Hosain, Riaz Qadir, Taufiq Rafat, Shahid Suhrawardy (Lahore: Oxford University Press, 1965)
Shamsie, Muneeza, A Dragonfly in the Sun: An Anthology of Pakistani Writing in English (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Talukdar, Mohammad H. R. (ed.) Memoirs of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy with a Brief Account of His Life and Work (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1987)
Zytaruk, George J. and Boulton, James T. (eds) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 2, June 1913 – Oct. 1916 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
L/PJ/12/3, India Office file on his activities in Moscow and Europe, April 1917 – February 1935, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Portrait with D. H. Lawrence and P. A. Heseltine, National Portrait Gallery, London
The Indian says (he is of Persian family): 'Oh, she is so like a Persian princess, it is strange – something grand, and perhaps cruel.' It is pleasant to see with all kinds of eyes, like argus. Suhrawardy was my pair of Indo-persian eyes. He is coming to Florida.
Letter from D. H. Lawrence to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 5 December 1915, in George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (eds) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), vol. 2, p. 466.
Image credit
Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy; Philip Arnold Heseltine (Peter Warlock); D. H. Lawrence by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, 29 November 1915, NPG Ax140425
© National Portrait Gallery, London, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
