Friday, April 11, 2008, Rabi-ul-Sani 4,1429    

PAL publishes directory of deceased writers

Islamabad—Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) has published a very comprehensive directory of 4300 deceased Pakistani writers of all languages in a book “Wafiyat-e-Ehl-e-Qalam”.

Another project of “Pakistani Ehl-e-Qalam Directory” is in the process of finalization. In the book “Pakistani Ehl-e-Qalam Directory”, the data of 3000 living writers from all major Pakistani languages is included.

An official told that both of the projects “Wafiyat- e-Ehl-e-Qalam” and “Pakistani Ehl-e-Qalam Directory” would be sources of information and reference for the scholars, researchers and the students as well.

He added that we don’t have much a long history of such research based directories, but we have considerable number of such works in Urdu. We can hope that this directory “Wafiyat-e-Ehl-e-Qalam” would be a good addition in this lot.

The official told that in the book “Wafiyat-e-Ehl-e- Qalam”, the period covered is from 15th August 1947 to 14th August 2007.

While elaborating, he said that the book “Wafiyat-e- Ehl-e-Qalam” may be considered a draft edition since it is not possible to make such research based project completely free from errors and missings. However it is tried to make it completely and authentic as much as possible comprehensive directory.

Compiler of “Wafiyat-e-Ehl-e-Qalam” is Dr. Mohammad Munir Ahmed Slatch. It is proper to mention here that Dr. Mohammad Munir Ahmed Slatch has already done a very wonderful job regarding “Iqbaliyat” and has compiled another directory of deceased prominent personalities of Pakistan.—APP