[citation needed] Hamza was born in Landi Kotal, Khyber District,[1] as the fourth of five sons in the house of Malik Bazmir Khan.
His primary-school teacher set the six-year-old to writing out the alphabet; Hamza received rather severe punishment when he instead followed his artistic inclinations and drew human figures.
As early as the fifth grade Hamza began writing poetry in Urdu; at this time there was little verse published in Pashto.
When his murshid (spiritual guide), Khawaja Syed Abdul Sattar Shah, advised him to write in his mother tongue Pashto, he followed that guidance.
[3] One reviewer commented in 2011:[1]Baba may not have been a first-rate Urdu poet, but once he started composing verses in Pashto, he perfected Pashto ghazal to the extent that Pashtun critics conferred on him the title, Baba-e-Pashto ghazal.When Shinwari worked on the railways, he had very little money.
He wrote classical poetry, blended it with recent innovations, and introduced new ideas in Pashtan ghazals.