Sara Shagufta was a modernist Pakistani poet. Born in a lower-class family, her family migrated to Karachi from Punjab during the partition of India. Hers was a life of struggles. Belonging to a poor and uneducated family, she wanted to rise socially through education but could not pass her matriculation. She got married when she was 17. This was followed by three more unsuccessful marriages.  She was deeply hurt with the death of her new born son and the indifference of her husbands. Badly treated by her husbands and society alike inspired her to write poetry and she continued to write with rare zeal. Suffering from a mental illness, she had to be admitted into an asylum. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, she finally committed suicide at an early age of 29, by throwing herself before a train.

The first notable example of literary Urdu can be found in the works of Amir Khusrau, who lived
from 1253 to 1325. Khusro was a pioneer in the literary use of the language, and his works
included folksongs, riddles, and traditional couplets known as dohas. He was a spiritual disciple of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi. Khusro died in October 1325, six months after the death of his spiritual master, and his tomb is in Nizamuddin Dargah, next to that of Nizamuddin Auliya.