Death anniversary of influential intellectual, revolutionary poet and one of the most highly-regarded poets of the Urdu language Faiz Ahmed Faiz is being observed today.

He was born in Sialkot on February 13, 1911.

Faiz Ahmed’s literary work was publicly honored when the Pakistan government conferred upon him the nation’s highest civil award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, in 1990.

He was the first Asian Poet to receive the Lenin peace prize, awarded by the soviet union in 1962. In 1976 he was awarded the lotus prize for literature.

His notable works include Naqsh-e-Faryadi, Dast-e-Sabah and Zindan-Nama.

Faiz Ahmed had also worked as editor of Mahanama Adab-e-Lateef and became a lecturer in English at Mao College, Amritsar in 1935 and then at Hailey College of Commerce, Lahore.

In 1959 he was appointed secretary Pakistan arts council and worked in that capacity till 1962.

Returning from London in 1964, he settled down in Karachi and was appointed the principal at Abdullah Haroon College.

Faiz Ahmed distinguished himself as a journalist and was editor of the Pakistan times, the Urdu newspaper Imroze and the weekly Lail-o-Nihar.

In the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, he worked in an honorary capacity in the department of information.