Fatima’s primary field of research is Persian mystical and epic literature, spanning Iran and the broader Persianate world, including Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. Her doctoral research in Persian literature from the University of Tehran explored the hagiographical-mystical literature of Central Asia. Specifically, her dissertation investigated the cross-cultural connections between Central Asian and Indian mystics during the 15th and 16th centuries, as evidenced in Persian hagiographical texts produced by Central Asian Sufi orders of that period.
She has also pursued extensive research on Persian epics, with a particular emphasis on Firdausī’s Shāhnāmah and its profound influence on various literary genres in 19th-century South Asia, including the Urdu ġhazal, dāstān, and marṡiyah. Fatima’s exploration of the Shāhnāmah’s influence on the Urdu marṡiyah led her to a deeper engagement with āshūrā poetry, predominantly composed in the form of marṡiyah, in both Urdu and Persian.
For her post-doctoral research fellowship at Mittal Institute, Harvard, Fatima will be doing a comparative study of āshūrā poetry in Urdu and Persian, tracing its development from the 16th century onward in South Asia and Iran. Such a comparison can provide fresh insights into this rich literary tradition, particularly during the late Safavid and Mughal periods, when there was significant cultural and literary exchange between South Asia and Iran.
Currently, she works as an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Creative Arts at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan. Her teaching portfolio includes courses on Persian epic and mystical literature, with particular focus on Firdausī’s Shāhnāmah and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s Maṡnavī and Dīvān. Fatima also teaches exile literature produced by Afghan and Iranian diasporic writers over the past two decades.
