(1900–1970)
Imtiaz Ali Taj was a pioneering Urdu playwright and journalist, born in Lahore on 13 October 1900, the son of Sayyid Mumtaz Ali, a scholar known as Shams-ul-Ulema for his contributions to Urdu drama. He is best known for his 1922 play Anarkali, the tragic love story of a harem girl and Crown Prince Salim, which was staged hundreds of times and later adapted into feature films, including Mughal-e-Azam (1960). He also created the beloved comic character Chacha Chakkan, modeled on Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and naturalized so successfully that it became one of Urdu literature's most famous humorous figures, and was noted for having deeply studied Western drama and resisting commercial pressures to write purely literary theatre. He was murdered in his home on 19 April 1970, leaving behind a legacy as one of the foremost figures in modern Urdu drama.
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