Haji Gulrez Tabassum

Gulrez Tabassum died in a local hospital in Peshawar on Wednesday, 28 October 2026, after a long illness, according to family sources quoted by Dawn. The Jang newspaper reported that he died of a heart attack. Reports gave his age as 75, 76 or 77; he was born in 1950. His funeral prayers were held the same evening in Kakakhel Town No. 1, Ring Road, Peshawar, and he was buried in his family's ancestral graveyard.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi said that Pashto music had lost a distinguished artist whose services would always be remembered. The provincial adviser on information, Samar Haroon Bilour, said the death of the Pride of Performance holder was a great loss to Pashto music. Fellow artists and fans shared his songs on social media.

Gulrez Tabassum, often called Haji Gulrez Tabassum, was born in 1950 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In an interview quoted by Afghanistan International he said he was born in the Marghuz area of Swabi district and that his family later moved to Mardan; Dawn gave Mardan as his birthplace. He grew up in a musical household. His father, Mahabat Khan, was a tabla master, and his uncle, Sohbat Khan, was among the well known singers of Pashto music. He began singing at around the age of 19.

Tabassum began his career at Radio Pakistan Peshawar and later reached a wider audience through the PTV Peshawar Centre, Pashto cinema and stage shows. Over roughly 46 years he recorded songs for about 120 Pashto films and, by his own account, performed in around ten thousand stage programmes, which earned him the title of "king of the stage" in Peshawar. He also sang at hujra gatherings and made regional audio recordings.

His repertoire spanned traditional tappay, charbeta, nimakai, badala and qissa ballads as well as ghazals, nazms and film songs, and he also sang in Saraiki, Hindko and Persian. Dawn noted his commitment to authentic Pashto musical heritage and his preference for classical folk instruments such as the rubab over synthetic beats. He worked with many composers, including Rafiq Shinwari, and recorded hundreds of songs with the musician Nazir Gul. His popular songs included "Za Pa Bara Zama", "Da Sour Salona", "Ta Cha Ta Katal" and "Dere Khabare Me Pa Zrra Wey". The Government of Pakistan honoured him with the President's Pride of Performance award.

Tabassum lived in Peshawar. He was widely known by the honorific Haji, as Haji Gulrez Tabassum. Reports named his survivors as Faiz Tabassum, Bakhtiar, Baroz, Jahanzeb, Sameer and Kamal. According to Nazir Gul, none of his children followed him into music. He said he gave up singing in 2015 because of poor health, and in his last years he was largely bedridden.

Tabassum is remembered as one of the defining voices of Pashto folk and stage music in the second half of the twentieth century, and as a custodian of tappay and other traditional forms that he carried from village gatherings to radio, television and cinema. Urdu News observed that his songs still found listeners among young people. His recordings and film songs remain part of the cultural memory of Pashto music on both sides of the border.