Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah (22 July 1915 – 11 December 2000) was a Pakistani politician, diplomat and author. She joined the Pakistani foreign service in 1948, and was the country's first female civil servant, as well as the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from the University of London. She was Pakistan's ambassador to Morocco from 1964 to 1967, and a delegate to the United Nations,
Family and education
Ikramullah was born as Shaista Akhtar Banu Suhrawardy into the Suhrawardy family to Hassan Suhrawardy and his wife Sahibzadi Shah Banu Begum. Sahista's mother was Nawab Abdul Latif's granddaughter. She was also the first Muslim woman to earn a PhD from the University of London.
Marriage and children
She married Mohammed Ikramullah in 1933. They had four children:
- Inam Ikramullah
- Naz Ashraf
- Salma Sobhan
- Princess Sarvath of Jordan
Political career
After her marriage, she was one of the first Indian Muslim women in her generation to leave purdah.
She was Pakistan's ambassador to Morocco from 1964 to 1967. In 1951 her book Letters to Neena was published; it is a collection of ten open letters supposedly written to Indians, who are personified as a woman called Neena. The real Neena was one of her in-laws. In 1991 her book Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: A Biography, about her uncle, was published. In her last days, she completed an English translation of Mirat ul Uroos and an Urdu volume on Kahavat aur Mahavray. In 2005 her collection of women's sayings and idioms in Urdu, called Dilli ki khavatin ki kahavatain aur muhavare, was posthumously published.