Forum Pakistan

Beg, Mirza Kalich (1853-1929)
Writer. A man of letters and an educator in Sindh, Mirza Kalich Beg was awarded the title 'The Sun of the Learned' (Shams al-Ulema). According to family tradition, his ancestors came from Georgia as prisoners of war during the Iranian war and were converted to Islam during the reign of the *Ta1purs. He received his education at Elphinstone College in Bombay. He wrote in Sindhi, Persian, *Urdu, *Hindi, English, and other languages. He became known following his writing the play Khurshid ('The Sun', 1885), based on a Gujarati play. In all, he wrote about 350 pieces in various genre.

He translated such books as Swift's Gullivers Travels, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and T. Day's The Story of Sandford and Merton into Sindhi. He also translated from Arabic.
Mirza Kalich Beg is a founder of the novel in Sindhi literature. His magnum opus is the novel Zinat (1890) about the need for female education in Muslim society. He devoted much attention to popularising Firdousi's Shah Nama. His play Inspector is based on Gogol's Government-Inspector. He compiled a number of dictionaries, reference books, textbooks, and did much to promote learning. He had a profound influence on the development of an enlightened *Sindhi literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 'Sindh ja Manya' (The Pearls of Sindh), Bombay, 1938 (in Sindhi}; L.H. Ajwani, 'History of Sindhi Literature', New Delhi, 1977.