Mohammad Hashem Cheshti

Mohammad Hashem Cheshti, also known with surname Chishti and as Ustad Hashem (Persian: استاد هاشم‎), was a contemporary classical musician and composer born in Kharabat area of Kabul,[1] Afghanistan, who died in 1994 in Germany under unclear circumstances.[1]

Ustad Hashem was born and raised in a musical family, which originally came from Kasur in Punjab, but settled in the 19th century in Kabul as court musicians.[2][3] Several of his close family members, including his brothers and his father are/were also famous musicians in their own right.[2][3] Both he and his brothers appeared regularly on Afghan Television and Radio prior to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent wars.[2][4][5] He accompanied regularly other famous Afghan musicians like Ahmad Zahir and Ustad Mahwash on his tabla.[2][6]

He was the teacher and mentor of Ustad Mahwash,[2][7][8] the first Afghan female master musician and Zuleikha, a US American dancer and artist.[2][9][10][11] He mastered many different traditional Afghan instruments, but his greatest passion was for the tabla, his mastership of which was supreme.[1][2][12][13] Following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan he had to flee his home country[1][2] and emigrated to Germany where he died in 1994,[2] killed by one of his former students for reasons unknown.[1]