प्यारा जान से भी ईमान है

'Pyara Jaan Se Bhi Imaan Hai' is one of the nine songs of Mohan Pictures' 1941 costume-fantasy Allaudin Laila, composed by Master Basheer to lyrics by Munshi Nayab. Its title — faith dearer than life — is in the heightened, vow-like Urdu-romantic idiom that runs through the film's soundtrack.

The line 'Pyara Jaan Se Bhi Imaan Hai' — 'Faith/honor is dearer than life' — belongs to the classical ghazal vocabulary of Urdu poetry, where 'imaan' (faith, integrity, honor) and 'jaan' (life, the beloved) are perennial contrasting terms. The formulation 'X se bhi pyara Y' (Y dearer even than X) is a standard hyperbolic elevation used to assert supreme value — life being the conventional baseline against which all other values are measured, so declaring something 'dearer than life' makes it absolute. In Urdu romantic poetry 'imaan' carries a double meaning: literal religious faith and the lover's code of fidelity — the 'deen-e-mohabbat' (religion of love) in which the beloved is one's god and fidelity one's prayer. Munshi Nayab's lyric in this context likely plays on both registers simultaneously: the character's devotion to the beloved is presented as a religious commitment, while the costume-drama setting allows 'imaan' to also invoke the hero's chivalric code. The Persian-derived vocabulary — 'imaan,' 'jaan,' 'pyara' in its literary sense — and the formal Urdu syntax signal the elevated literary register that Arabian Nights films of the period consistently preferred over everyday spoken Hindi.

Allaudin Laila (1941) was a Mohan Pictures fantasy film directed by A.M. Khan, drawing on the Arabian Nights tradition that had supplied Indian cinema with adventure-romance plots since the silent era. The title fuses two iconic Arabic-Urdu literary names — 'Allaudin' (Aladdin, from Alf Laila wa Laila / One Thousand and One Nights) and 'Laila' (the legendary beloved of the tragic lover Majnun) — creating an implied love-adventure set in a mythologized Middle Eastern world. The cast included Jayant, Ameena, Ghulam Mohd., Zahoor, and Indurani. Music director Master Basheer composed a score suited to the genre's requirement for grand romantic declaration alongside moments of derring-do. Lyricist Munshi Nayab worked in the elevated Urdu-romantic register characteristic of the Arabian Nights film, where songs addressed honor, loyalty, and passionate devotion. 'Pyara Jaan Se Bhi Imaan Hai' — 'My faith/honor is dearer to me than life itself' — is quintessentially such a number: a vow-song in which a character declares that integrity outranks survival. Such declaration-songs were essential dramatic punctuation in fantasy-adventure films, functioning as the verbal equivalent of a hero's oath or a heroine's impossible choice. The per-song singer has not been documented in available sources.