Atiya's journeys: a Muslim woman from colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain

More than a century ago, Atiya Fyzee, a Muslim woman of the renowned Tyabji clan, set out from colonial Bombay to study in Edwardian London. As she rode the steamboat, she began writing her daily experiences in a diary that would later appear as serialized entries in an Urdu women’s magazine published from the Punjab. Despite the magazine’s small circulation at the time, Atiya’s travelogue drew enough attention and gave the fledgling author her first taste of fame. In the years to come, she also became well known for her friendship with Maulana Shibli Numani and Muhammad Iqbal, two of South Asia’s most prominent Muslim intellectuals. Atiya and her husband Samuel Rahamin gained popularity worldwide in the early twentieth century in the fields of music, dance, theatre, the visual arts, and literature. Atiya Fyzee became a key figure in the cultural and intellectual history of South Asia. Atiya’s legend, sometimes contradictory and often exoticized, was formed in the last years of her life when she lived in Karachi after the Partition. This is a fascinating account of a Muslim women’s experience of ‘everyday’ in Edwardian Britain.