Yildirim is a Turkish word and it means ‘lightning’. How Syed Sajjad Hyder, son of an upper-middle class family from Nehtaur, a small town in the district of Bijnor, UP, became Yildirim is an interesting story.

Though Qurrat-ul-Ain Hyder, the master storyteller and Sajjad Hyder Yildirim’s celebrated daughter, has retold the tale in her Kaar-e-jahan daraz hai — an autobiographical novel and a great family saga — one is tempted to give a thumbnail summary.

Yildirim belonged to a family whose members were descendants of some Sufis. These Sufis had migrated from Tirmiz (a city now in Uzbekistan and spelt Termez) in the 12th century AD.

Their descendants, who settled in Nehtaur in the 14th century and were given agricultural lands in the Mughal era, were not mere Sufis but scholars and this tradition of scholarship was handed down to posterity, including women.

As Qurrat-ul-Ain Hyder has mentioned, Syeda Umm-i-Marium, Yildirim’s maternal grandmother, had penned the Quran’s Persian translation. Yildirim’s paternal grandfather, Mir Ahmed Ali Tirmizi, sided with the troops who had decided to resist the British colonialists in 1857 and Nehtaur is known in the history of 1857 freedom war for putting up a fierce resistance. After the ultimate failure of the freedom fighters, however, their lands and properties were confiscated by the British.

The younger generations had to study, learn English and, the tragic part of the story is, seek government jobs under the very same British rulers against whom their forefathers had fought.

Born in 1880, Syed Sajjad Hyder Yildirim was a humorist, short story writer, translator and a civil servant. He was admitted to M.A.O. College, which was to become Aligarh Muslim University, and he was to become its registrar.

In those days Aligarh was considered India’s Oxford and some towering figures were part of the faculty. Theodore Beck was the principal and the renowned scholars such as Shibli Nu’mani, Prof Arnold, Prof Chakravarty and Dr Ziauddin Ahmed, were teaching there. Yildirim excelled in Persian and, hence, was Shibli’s beloved student.

Yildirim did his BA from Aligarh in 1901 and went to Iraq to work as a dragoman (this English word is in fact derived from the Arabic ‘tarjuman’ or interpreter) for the British embassy in Baghdad. But the events that had taken place a few years ago played an important role in Sajjad Hyder’s becoming Yildirim and, in fact, shaping his entire career.

Haji Ismail Khan, a landowner from Aligarh district, had lived in Arabia for quite some time. He learned Turkish in Arabia since it was ruled by Turks back then. When he came back to India, Haji Ismail was made Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s literary assistant. In 1897, Haji Ismail asked young Sajjad Hyder, as he was a brilliant student and excelled in English, to teach him English and in return he taught Yildirim Turkish.

Haji Sahib began publishing a literary journal Mu’aarif in 1898 (not to be confused with the magazine with the same name launched in 1916 from Azamgarh). Styled on a Turkish magazine, Mu’aarif had as its assistant editor none other than Sajjad Hyder.

Both Haji Sahib and the young assistant editor translated many Turkish stories and novels and serialised them in the magazine. Sajjad Hyder took the Turkish word Yildirim as his pen-name. Hence, when the government needed a young educated man who knew Turkish and English well, professors at Aligarh recommended Yildirim.

Later, he was transferred to the British embassy in Kostantiniyye or Constantinople (now Istanbul). In 1912, he was transferred to India as assistant political agent to Muhammad Yaqoob Khan, the former emir of Afghanistan who had renounced his throne in 1879 and taken refuge with the British.

In 1912, Yildirim married Nazr Zehra Begum, daughter of Syed Nazr-ul-Baqar, a nobleman from a Syed family. His wife was a writer in her own right and was known as an author by the pen-name of Bint-e-Nazrul Baqar, since in those days it was deemed inappropriate for women writers to show their real name.

Yildirim was absorbed into the UP civil service but when M.A.O. College was made a university in 1920, he was made its registrar.

A product of Aligarh and inspired by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Yildirim was indeed a proponent of modern education and western ways. But his writings were more influenced by Turkish writers than Sir Syed.

According to Suraiya Hussain, many Turk writers were living in exile in Europe and were impressed by symbolist aesthetes. Yildirim introduced them to Urdu through translations. Though Yildirim was influenced by these Turk writers and this lent an aesthetic and Romantic touch to his style, he remained very much grounded in his soil and many of his writings are based on the social issues at home. He was a great supporter of women’s rights.

Apparently a Romantic, Yildirim was wary of the Urdu translations of semi-erotic English novels that had flooded the market in the late 19th and early 20th century. On the other hand, he was critical of Nazeer Ahmed and other novelists of Urdu for avoiding love and romance in their writings.

He believed the cheap romantic fiction’s translations and some so-called historical romance were a reaction to fill that gap. He intentionally wrote many pieces of short fiction to promote Urdu short story.

In fact Yildirim is considered one of the pioneers of Urdu short story along with Prem Chnad and Rashid-ul-Khairi. Yildirim is one of the pioneers of romantic, or highly imaginative, prose in Urdu, too. He also wrote humour and some of his humorous pieces are among the classical pieces of humour in Urdu prose, such as Mujhe mere doston se bachao.

Yildirim’s books include Khayalistan, Aaseb-e-ulfat, Purana khwab, Hikayaat-o-ahtisasaat, Huma Khanum and Matloob haseena; while Jang-o-jidaal is a play. His translations from Turkish include Zehra, Salis bakhair (novel by Ahmed Hikmat) and Jalaluddin Khwarzam Shah (historical drama by Namiq Kamal Bey).

As put by Qurrat-ul-Ain Hyder, Yildirim represented his era both in his personality and writings.

Sajjad Hyder Yildirim died in Lucknow on April 12, 1943.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2016