Background
Ustad Hashem was born and raised in an extremely musical family, which originally came from Kasur in Punjab, but settled in the 19th century in Kabul as court musicians.
Ustad Hashem was born and raised in an extremely musical family, which originally came from Kasur in Punjab, but settled in the 19th century in Kabul as court musicians.
He accompanied regularly other famous Afghan musicians like Ahmad Zahir and Ustad Mahwash on his tabla. He was the teacher and mentor of Ustad Mahwash, the first Afghan female master musician and Zuleikha, a United States American dancer and artist. He mastered many different traditional Afghan instruments, but his greatest passion was for the tabla, his mastership of which was supreme.
Following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan he had to flee his home country and emigrated to Germany where he died in 1994, killed by one of his former students for reasons unknown.