Ada Jafarey at Louvre Museum Paris, 1969

Ada Jafarey was born in Badayun, UP, India on August 22, 1926 and was named Aziz Jehan by her mother. Ada is a Pakistani poet who is regarded as the first major Urdu poet who published as a woman and has been called “The First Lady of Urdu Poetry”. She is also an author and is considered a prominent figure in contemporary Urdu literature.
Her poetic quest, which now spans several decades, started when she wrote her first verse at the age of 9 years, under the pen name of Ada Badayuni. Encouragement in her childhood and early youth from her mother and then, after marriage, from her husband Nurul Hasan Jafarey kept her literary spark going.

She married Nurul Hasan Jafarey on 29 January 1947, in Lucknow, India. After her marriage, she took the pen name Ada Jafarey. Her husband, Nurul Hasan, was a top-ranking civil servant of the Federal Government of India. Ada also moved with her husband to Karachi after Partition of India. Her husband was a littérateur himself who wrote columns for both English and Urdu newspapers. He also served as the president of the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu. Nurul Hasan, a major inspiration to her writing, passed away on 3 December 1995.



Ada published her first book Main Saaz Dhundtee Rahee in 1950. In addition to an autobiography and research work, Ada has published five collections of poetry. Ada was awarded the Adamjee Award in 1967 for her second poetic collection Shehr e Dard. In recognition of her work, the Government of Pakistan awarded her the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in 1981. She received the Baba-e-Urdu Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters in 1994, and the Quaid-e-Azam Literary Award in 1997. She was also the recipient of the Hamdard Foundation of Pakistan’s Certificate of Merit. The Government of Pakistan conferred upon her the Pride of Performance Award for Literature in 2002. She is the recipient of various international awards from literary societies in North America and Europe. Courtesy: Dr Aamir Jafarey