[2][4] Abbas was born on 4 January 1953 in Lahore, Pakistan into the Punjabi-speaking Sharif family.
His father, Muhammad Sharif, was an upper-middle-class businessman and industrialist whose family had emigrated from Anantnag in Kashmir for business, and eventually settled in the village of Jati Umra in Amritsar district, Punjab, at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Following the partition of India and Pakistan's independence in 1947, his parents migrated from Amritsar to Lahore.
They had two sons, Aziz and Yousuf, and two daughters, Salma and Sara.
[2][5][6] Abbas died on 11 January 2013 at the age of 60 of a cardiac arrest.