died young. There was no other prospective groom who suited her rich family background. She died on Thursday 2 February 1922 at 27. An obituary issued in the women's magazine Tahzib un-Niswan said: "She was a nightingale, now silenced, who was born in a cage, lived her whole life in that cage, and there drew her last breath." Appreciation Zahida Khatoon Sherwani is the subject matter of a doctoral thesis under the title Zay Khay Sheen written by Fatima Hasan. In a lecture given to the Working Women Welfare Trust at Karachi, Hasan spoke glowingly about Sheen saying "...Sheen took part in various feminist activities aimed at promoting and encouraging women's right to education and empowerment. Even the tragedies of the death of her grandparents, mother, brother and fiancé that she suffered in her very young age could not deter her from continuing with the mission." Hasan also said about her: "She was a visionary and she wrote on a variety of topics such as farming and farmers, World War, Aligarh University and the Khilafat Movement. Her poetic work Masnavi Aina-i-Haram on women's rights was like Allama Iqbal's Shikwa and drew the latter's remarks that had Zay Khay Sheen lived longer, she would have achieved as much as he did". Zay Khay Sheen is also the theme of two MA and MPhil graduate theses. References External links Ze Khe Sheen at Rekhta 1894 births 1922 deaths 20th-century Indian women writers Indian women poets Indian women's rights activists 20th-century Urdu-language writers Urdu-language poets from India Urdu-language writers from British India Urdu-language women writers People from Aligarh district Indian people of Pashtun descent Women writers from Uttar Pradesh Poets from Uttar Pradesh 20th-century Indian poets Indian women activists Activists from Uttar Pradesh