A Rare Photograph Of Safia Manto, Zakia Jalal and Sorraya Nasir Ud Din.

 A Rare Photograph Of Safia Manto, Zakia Jalal and Sorraya Nasir Ud Din.

A rare photograph of Safia Manto (1916-1977), Zakia Jalal (b. 1928), and Surraiya Nasir-ud-Deen (b. 1927), taken in Lahore right after Partition. After moving to Lahore Saadat Hasan Manto's (1912-1955) and Surraiya Nasiruddin's families lived together for a while. 

Surraiya Nasir-ud-Deen was Safia Manto's sister-in-law (her brother’s wife). Her father and uncle held very important positions in the court of Maharaja Pratap Singh (reign 1923-1947) of Nabha in east Punjab. 

Safia and Saadat Hasan Manto's families, both from Kashmir, were related to each other. Safia and her siblings were born in Zanzibar. Their father, who was a police officer in the British administration, was killed there during protests staged by local Arab clove merchants. Zanzibar, sometimes known as the Spice Islands, was once the world's largest producer of cloves. In the 19th and 20th centuries many Indian Muslims, which included the Kashmiri relatives of Safia and Saadat Hasan Manto, had settled in Zanzibar. After the murder of Safia Manto's father in Zanzibar her widowed mother took her children to Bombay, where Manto and Safia were married in 1939. 

Manto had arrived in Lahore in January 1948, around four months after Partition, while his wife and children had migrated to Lahore immediately after Partition. Both Manto and his family first arrived in Karachi from Bombay (now Mumbai) and then moved to Lahore.

Rare Photograph Of Safia Manto, Zakia Jalal and Sorraya Nasir Ud Din.