Khursheed Kamal Aziz was born on 11 December 1927 to Abdul Aziz, a
barrister and historian. He belonged to the
Kakazai tribe. He was born in a town called Ballamabad,
Chiniot District,
Punjab, British India. He received his early education from M.B. High School in
Batala, Punjab and then went to first
Forman Christian College and finally to
Government College Lahore for further studies where one of his professors was the famed
Patras Bokhari. Later he completed his studies at
Victoria University in
Manchester,
UK. Aziz taught at various reputed institutions such as the
University of Cambridge and
University of Oxford, UK, and at universities in
Heidelberg, Germany as well as in
Khartoum, Sudan and
the Punjab University in
Lahore, Pakistan. He also delivered occasional lectures at universities in Pakistan:
Karachi,
Peshawar,
Islamabad; Bangladesh:
Dacca; United Kingdom:
Hull, New Castle upon Tyne and
Oxford; Switzerland:
Geneva and
Bergen. He worked briefly, in the early 1970s, as an advisor to
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and was the chairman of the 'National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research' but he later fell out with
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his regime and left that position. Some years later, he returned his "
Sitara-i-Imtiaz" Award awarded by the
President of Pakistan in protest of his treatment by the Martial Law authorities after General
Zia-ul-Haq took over power in 1977 and was forced to leave the country. He lived many years abroad as an exile and taught at many universities abroad. He began to collect his research material for his many famous books while he was teaching in Germany. His research material was enriched by the experiences he had while living in many different countries abroad. ==Death and legacy==