Safiye Erol was born to Sami and Emine İkbal in Uzunköprü town of Edirne, then Ottoman Empire, on 2 January 1902.
[1][2] Her father was a clerk in the Municipality of Uzunköprü, and her mother was a member of the Bektashi Order lodge in Keşan.
[2][3] In 1926, she earning a Ph.D. degree with the thesis Die Pflanzennamen in der altarabischen Poesie , about the plant names in the Arabian language poetry.
[3] In the beginning of her writing career, she used the pen names "Sami" for articles and translations, as well as "Dilara" for short stories.
[2][3] She translated the 1914-novel Kejsarn av Portugallien of Swedish Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) as Portugaliye İmparatoriçesi (1941) and German Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's (1777–1843) 1811-novel Undine as Su Kızı (1945).
[3] During the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan in 1962, she wrote the serial Çölde Biten Rahmet Ağacı in the newspaper Yeni Istanbul, which narrated the phases of the life of Muhammad in the desert.