Atiya Fyzee

Atiya Fyzee (1 August 1877 – 4 January 1967) was an Indian writer, social reformer and patron of the arts from Bombay, described by the English article as the first woman from South Asia to attend the University of Cambridge. She became known across India for Zamana-i-Tahsil, the Urdu diary of her London teacher-training stay, and wrote pioneering books on Indian music. In 1912 she married the painter Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin, and in 1948 she moved with him to Karachi, where she died in 1967. ^{1 2}

She was born in Constantinople into a Sulaimani Bohra family of the Tyabji kin, connected to Bombay's reforming Muslim elite; her great-uncle was Badruddin Tyabji. She came to London in 1906 for teacher training at Maria Grey College, keeping a diary in Urdu that she sent home to her sisters Zehra and Nazli. Edited by Zehra and published in instalments in the women's journal Tehzeeb-e-Niswan, the diary made her reputation; it appeared in book form in 1921 as Zamana-i-Tahsil. In London she moved in Indian and British intellectual circles and met, among many others, Muhammad Iqbal, whose letters to her she later published. ^{1 3}

Her books on Indian music, Indian Music (1914) and The Music of India (1925), were among the earliest English-language studies of the subject by an Indian author. She corresponded with Shibli Nomani and Iqbal, and her letters and friendships were famous enough to attract controversy in her lifetime. At an educational conference at Aligarh in 1926 she spoke against the seclusion of women in purdah and for women's freedom of movement. With her husband she made their Bombay home, Aiwan-i-Rifat, a centre of art, music and literary gatherings. ^{1 3}

In 1948, at Muhammad Ali Jinnah's invitation, the couple moved to Karachi, where they re-created Aiwan-i-Rifat as a gallery and library. After Jinnah's death they were evicted from the house allotted to them, fell into poverty and sold works from their collection to live. Atiya Fyzee died in Karachi on 4 January 1967; the Urdu article places her grave beside her husband's in the Sulaimani Bohra enclosure of the Mewa Shah cemetery. ^{3 2}