Abdul Hamid Baba

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Abdul Hamid Baba, also known as Abdul Hameed Mashogagar, was a Pashtun poet and Sufi teacher. He was born in Mashogagar, a village near Badaber, Peshawar, in the late 1600s. He moved to Peshawar for schooling and became a priest and teacher, attracting students from nearby areas. His poetry, mostly in Pashto, often carries moral lessons and ideas from Sufism, sometimes criticizing worldly life.

He died around 1732 and is buried in Mashogagar, in the house where he spent most of his life. His work was popular in Persia as well, where people nicknamed him "Hameed the Hair-splitter." The 19th-century writer Henry George Raverty called him Afghanistan's cynical poet and compared him to Saadi of Persia. His best-known works include Love's Fascination, The King and the Beggar, and Pearls and Corals; these have been translated into English.