After rendering five Panjabi mystic poets into English I thought of translating my own Punjabi and Urdu poetry into English. But before I embarked on that project it flashed to me that my teacher and mentor Prof. Gilani Kamran had a prior right on me. No doubt he was a great teacher of English literature which career of his peaked with his appointment as Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Government College University, Lahore when Government College, Lahore (already a premier institution of high learning in many disciplines) was elevated to the status of university and the newly established university needed a guide for expanding the scope of teaching and research at the department of English Language & Literature of the university. Having taught English literature at post-graduate level at Government College, Lahore for more than a decade and heading Government College, Baghbanpura, Lahore and Government College Asghar Mall, Rawalpindi (at which two colleges he started post-graduate classes for teaching of English literature which continue upto date) and heading Department of English Language & Literature at Govt. FC College, Lahore and retired from Government Service as head of English Department of Government FC College, Lahore. Professor Gilani Kamran was perhaps the only choice for appointment as Professor Emeritus of English Language & Literaure at the newly established Government College Lahore University. He played his newly allotted role as Professor Emeritus of English literature of Government College Lahore University by helping and guiding the teachers at the English Department of the newly established University in developing new courses and preparing syllabi for the same. In addition he guided post-graduate students at the English Department of the University by having two (seminar type) sittings a week with the students of English Language & Literature of the newly chartered university.

In addition to being a great teacher of English literature Professor Gilani Kamran was a great intellectual, a renowned critic of English and Urdu literature and a columnist of the English language national daily newspaper, The Nation, Lahore in which weekly columns of his, under the title Cultural Metaphor, he reported on literary activity in Pakistan especially Lahore, and also reviewed newly published books of Urdu literature in Pakistan. As an intellectual he would be remembered as the author of “Anal- Haque Reconsidered (as a part of which he also included his own English translation of Hussain B Mansoor Hallaj’s mystic thought in Arabic verse (under the title Kitab Al-Twasin). As a scholar of mystic thought in South East Asia, he has left a collection of his lectures on the subject delivered by him in various Universities of America where he was invited to lecture in 1978. He has also bequeathed to posterity his history of Western Literary Ciriticism in Urdu under the title (مغرب کے تنقیدی نظریے) which book of his (in two volumes) was written by him on the request of his publishers, Maktab-e-Karwan, Lahore and which book of his remains a text-book for post graduate students of literature at various universities of Pakistan.

Coming back to the subject of my translation of Professor Gilani Kamran’s poetry I have translated his epoch making long-poem in Urdu language titled “Bagh-e-Dunya” (World Garden) in which epic poem after reviewing the decadent condition of Islamic thought in the Muslim world, he has celebrated the Islamic politico spiritual renaissance in Iran under the great leader Ayatulla Roohulla Khomeini in 1979. The force of his tribute to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran under Imam Khomeini can be fully appreciated only in studying the poem in its original Urdu, but I have tried my best to convey as much of it as I could in my English rendering of the same in rhythmic prose, which certainly remains closest possible to the original Urdu.

Latif Qureshi