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Atiya Fyzee is not been a popular figure in the literary or historical canon, which is somewhat surprising considering that she belonged to the prominent Tyabji clan of Bombay. Atiya’s claim to fame rests on two fronts: her ‘friendships’ with renowned Muslim intellectuals of the time, particularly Maulana Shibli Numani and Muhammad Iqbal, and her involvement in the network of ‘secluded scholars’ that were the earliest generation of Muslim women in India to found modern girls’ schools and contribute to Urdu women’s journals. This chapter provides a biographical overview of Atiya’s life, focusing on her dedication to learning and the arts within the context of her extended family, changing gender relations, and Muslim reform in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Asia. It also tackles her marriage to Samuel Rahamin in 1912 and their collaboration in fields such as music and dance.

Atiya Fyzee is usually remembered in the contemporary context for her friendships with Maulana Shibli Numani and Muhammad Iqbal, two of the prominent male Muslim intellectuals of her time. Shibli received a traditional Islamic education in the Qur’an, jurisprudence, and Arabic and Persian literatures. He founded the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama (Council of Scholars) in order to bring together traditional Islamic scholars, or ‘ulama, with Muslims educated in modernist institutions. Iqbal was a poet, writer, philosopher, and politician associated with the All-India Muslim League. Atiya’s association with these two men has been puzzling and brought her notoriety. Nevertheless, their correspondence reflects the history of friendship between Muslim and South Asian men and women. It also helps explain how knowledge about the Muslim past was transferred from north India’s male-dominated intellectual circles to a network of Muslim women in other parts of the Indian subcontinent.

On 1 September 1906, a young, unveiled Muslim woman, Atiya Fyzee (1877–1967), boarded a steamboat that began a historical travel from India to Britain. During her sojourn, Atiya recorded her experiences and observations in a diary. This book is about her life, writing, and travels. It offers a biographical overview of her literary and cultural contributions within the context of her extended family network, women’s changing roles, and Muslim socio-religious reform movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It also focuses on her relationships with Maulana Shibli Numani and Muhammad Iqbal, two prominent Muslim male intellectuals of her time. This book deals with themes of travel writing, empire, world history, and Britain’s multicultural past. It also includes a full translation of Atiya’s Zamana-i-tahsil from the original Urdu.

Atiya Fyzee’s travelogue provides a glimpse not only of grand public gatherings and prestigious social engagements, but also of the so-called everyday: a world that is routine and even mundane. A form of informal ethnography, Atiya’s travelogue contains accounts of food and cooking in Britain during the Edwardian period, along with gardening, the weather, religion, leisure, and travel. Atiya also wrote about the day-to-day realities of friendships, college life, and what it meant in practical terms to study at a women’s teacher training college of the period. She was particularly impressed by the English servants when compared to those back in her native India.

Atiya Fyzee arrived in London in September 1906, when politics in Britain was undergoing major changes. London at the time was still a great imperial city, the nexus of the British Empire’s political authority, financial power, and commercial dominance. Atiya met many different individuals over the course of her stay, including former colonial officers and British gentry, famous Muslim reformers, and nationalist leaders. Based on Atiya’s account of her encounters with local elites and prominent Indians in London, this chapter discusses empire, Britain’s thriving social scene, and diasporic communities in Edwardian Britain. It notes the comparative frequency of mixed marriages between Indians and Britons and Atiya’s time spent with fellow students and staff at the Maria Grey Training College.

From colonial Bombay where she spent most of her adult life, Atiya Fyzee travelled to Britain for university education. Atiya had the distinction of being the only one among almost 30 million Indians to travel overseas in the century between 1830 and 1930. Although her stay in Britain ended prematurely after just a year for reasons that were unknown, she took the opportunity to visit Heidelberg and Munich in Germany and Paris in France before going home to Bombay in 1907. A year later, Atiya went to Europe with her elder sister and her husband. Atiya’s journeys can be understood metaphorically through the lens of biography to highlight the important role of Muslim women in shaping world history. It offers a gendered critique of imperial culture stimulated by her experience of travel and expressed in the context of the most everyday of activities.