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Ataullah K. Durrani
Ataullah K. Durrani is the Afghan inventor and developer of fast-cooking
rice, marketed under the name "Minute Rice," who left more than half of his one
million dollar estate for the translation and study of the works of the19th
century poets, Ghalib (d. 1869) and Mir Taqi Mir (d. 1810). He died of lung
cancer at the age of 67 on Saturday May 2, 1964, at Swedish Hospital in
Englewood, Colorado.
In 1941, Durrani brought a portable stove to the office of an executive of
General Foods Corporation and cooked the rice that he had invented in 60
seconds, thus becoming wealthy overnight. He had established his method by 1939,
after years of experimenting at a home laboratory, and having studied works on
rice at the New York Public Library (Annual of Urdu Studies 4, 1984, p. 97,
reprint of New York Times, May 5, 1964, p. 43).
In his will, Durrani stated that his bequest should be paid "to Harvard
University or such non-profit institution as my trustees select...for the
purpose of sponsoring and furthering a program of continuing research into and
translation of the works of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib and Meer Taqui Meer...with
the object of making available in English their writings and the historic
setting thereof, as a memorial to my friend Syed Hossain, scholar and former
Ambassador from India to Egypt." Hossain, a disciple of Mohandas K. Gandhi, had
come to America frequently on lecture tours in the 1920s and 1930s, when the
pair may have met each other.
This bequest was used by Harvard University to fund the appointment of
Annemarie Schimmel as Professor of Indo-Muslim Studies, and the publication of
Three Mughal Poets: Mir, Sauda, Mir Hasan in 1968, and Ghalib 1797-1869: Life
and Letters in 1969, both by Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam (op. cit., p.
99, Editor's note).
This was apparently not the first time that Durrani had funded research in
this area: it is reported that he gave Rs. 100,000 to the Department of Urdu at
Aligarh Muslim University for a "Syed Hossain Memorial Professorship" and a
project to translate Ghalib's Urdu verse into English. However, this did not
lead to anything, and consequently Durrani withdrew his support (op. cit., p.
99, Editor's note).
Bibliography
- Annual of Urdu Studies 4, 1984, pp. 97-99.
- Joseph Lelyveld, "Inventor Leaves Half Million for Translation of 2
Persian Poets," The New York Times, June 19, 1964, p. 33.
- Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, Three Mughal Poets: Mir, Sauda, Mir
Hasan, Cambridge, Mass., 1968. Idem, ed. and tr., Ghalib 1797-1869: Life and
Letters, Cambridge, Mass., 1969.
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