Syed Ameer Ali CIE1849–1928 was an Indian Muslim jurist hailing from the state of Oudh from where his father shifted and settled down at Orissa. He was a prominent political leader, and author of a number of influential books on Muslim history and the modern development of Islam. who is credited for his contributions to the Law of Indiaparticularly Muslim Personal Law as well as the development of political philosophy for Muslims during the British Raj. He was a signatory to the 1906 Quran Petition and founding member of the All India Muslim League.
Syed Ameer Ali traced his lineage through the eighth Imam Ali Al-Raza to Muhammad. Forefathers of his are known to have held office under Shah Abbas II of Persia and taken part in Nadir Shah's invasion of India. After the plunder of Delhi the family line then settled in the Sub-continent and started serving Muhammad Shah. Another of his forefathers fought against Maratha Empire in the third battle of Panipat. Finally when his grandfather died, his father Saadat Ali Khan was brought up and educated by Syed's maternal uncle.
He was born on 6 April 1849 at Cuttack in Orissa as the fourth of five sons of Syed Saadat Ali. His father moved the family to Calcutta, and then to Chinsura where they settled more permanently among the ashraf elite. His family took advantage of the educational facilities provided by the British government but otherwise shunned by the Muslim community. With the assistance of his British teachers and supported by several competitive scholarships, he achieved outstanding examination results, graduating from Calcutta University in 1867, and gaining an MA with Honours in History in 1868. The LLB followed quickly in 1869. He then began legal practice in Calcutta. By this point he was already one of the few outstanding Muslim achievers of his generation.[3]
A Muslim, sometimes spelled Moslem is a follower of the religion of Islam a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the Quran. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts called hadith.Muslim is an Arabic word meaning "one who submits to God.A female Muslim is sometimes called a Muslimah .
Odisha formerly known as Orissa is an Indian state on the subcontinent's east coast, by the Bay of Bengal. It is surrounded by the Indian states of West Bengal to the north-east and in the east, Jharkhand to the north, Chhattisgarh to the west and north-west and Andhra Pradesh to the south. It is the modern name of the ancient kingdom of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka in 261 BCE. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April 1936 as a province in British India and consisted predominantly of Oriya speakers.1 April is therefore celebrated as Utkala Dibasa foundation day of Odisha. The region is also known as Utkala when mentioned in India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana. Cuttack remained the capital of the state for over eight centuries until 13 April 1948 when Bhubaneswar was officially declared as the new state capital, a position it still holds.
The Bay of Bengal, the largest bay in the world,[3] forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Roughly triangular in shape, it is bordered mostly by India and Sri Lanka to the west, Bangladesh to the north, and Burma (Myanmar) and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the east.
The Bay of Bengal occupies an area of 2,172,000 km². A number of large rivers – the Ganges and its distributaries such as Padma and Hooghly, the Brahmaputra and its distributaries such as Jamuna and Meghna, other rivers such as Irrawaddy River, Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna and Kaveri flow into the Bay of Bengal. Among the important ports are Chennai, Chittagong, Kolkata, Mongla, Paradip, Tuticorin, Visakhapatnam and Yangon.
Odisha is the 9th largest state by area in India, and the 11th largest by population. Oriya officially spelled Odia is the official and most widely spoken language spoken by three quarters of the population. Odisha has a coastline about 480 km long and lacked good ports except for the deepwater facility at Paradip, until the recent launch of the Dhamra Port. The narrow level coastal strip, including the Mahanadi river delta supports the bulk of the population.
It was carved out of the southern part of Bihar on 15 November 2000. Jharkhand shares its border with the states of Bihar to the north, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to the west Odisha to the south, and West Bengal to the east. It has an area of 79,710 km2 30,778 sq mi .
The industrial city Ranchi is its capital and Dumka is sub capital, Jamshedpur is the largest and the biggest industrial city of the state, while Dhanbad the coal capital of India is the second most populous city.
The name Jharkhand means "The Land of Forests. Jharkhand accounts for 40% of the mineral resources of India.
In 1877 Syed Ameer Ali had formed the Central National Muhammadan Association to work towards the political advancement of the Indian Muslims who had suffered grievously in 1857 in the aftermath of the failed Sepoy Mutiny against the East India Company; the British were seen as foreign invaders. But the organization declined towards the end of the 19th century
Lord Minto met with the Muslim delegation in June 1906. The Minto Morley Reforms of 1909 called for separate Muslim electorates.
In 1885 the Indian National Congress was founded as a forum which later became a party to promote a nationalist cause Although the Congress attempted to include the Muslim community in the struggle for independence from the British rule - and some Muslims were very active in the Congress - the majority of Muslim leaders did not trust the party viewing it as organization.Some Muslims felt that an independent united India would inevitably be and that there was a need to address the issue of the Muslim identity within India.
A turning point came in 1900 when the British administration in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh acceded to Hindu demands and made Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, the official language. The proslytisation conducted in the region by the activists of a new Hindu reformist movement also stirred Muslim's concerns about their faith. Eventually the Muslims feared that the Hindu majority would seek to suppress Muslim culture and religion in the region of an independent India.
After moving to London, where he stayed between 1869 and 1873 joined the Inner Temple and made contacts with the elite of the city. He absorbed the influence of contemporary liberalism. He had contacts with almost all the administrators concerned with India and with leading English liberals such as John Bright and the Fewcetts, Henry 1831–1898 and his wife, Millicent Fawcett 1847-1929.
He resumed his legal practice at Calcutta High Court on his return to India in 1873. The year after, he was elected as a Fellow of Calcutta University as well as being appointed as a lecturer in Islamic Law at the Presidency College, Kolkata. In 1878, he was appointed as the member of the Bengal Legislative Council. He revisited England in 1880 for one year.
In 1883 he was nominated to the membership of the Governor General Council. He became a professor of law in Calcutta University in 1881. In 1890 he was made a judge in the Calcutta High Court. He founded the political organisation, Central National Muhamedan Association, in Calcutta in 1877. This made him the first Muslim leader to put into practice the need for such an organisation due to the belief that efforts directed through an organisation would be more effective than those originating from an individual leader. The Association played an important role in the modernisation of Muslims and in arousing their political consciousness. He was associated with it for over 25 years, and worked for the political advancement of the Muslims.
He established the London Muslim League in 1908. This organisation was an independent body and not a branch of All India Muslim League. In 1909, he became the first Indian to sit as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. On appointment to the Privy Council he became entitled to be addressed as The Rt Hon.
In 1910 he established the first mosque in London. In doing so he formally co-established the London Mosque Fund, alongside a group of prominent British Muslims, to finance the building of the mosque in the capital. His field of activities was now broadened and he stood for Muslim welfare all over the world. He played an important role in securing separate electorates for the Muslims in South Asia and promoting the cause of the Khilafat Movement.
He retired in 1904 and decided to settle down in England where he was out of the way of the main current of Muslim political life. Through his career in general he became a jurist and well-known Islamic scholar. He died on August 4, 1928 in Sussex.
Ali's record as the only Muslim privy councillor in British history was only broken a century later in June 2009 when Sadiq Khan was appointed as Minister of State for Transport with membership of the Privy Council.
Syed Ameer Ali 1849–1928
Syed Ameer Ali CIE1849–1928 was an Indian Muslim jurist hailing from the state of Oudh from where his father shifted and settled down at Orissa. He was a prominent political leader, and author of a number of influential books on Muslim history and the modern development of Islam. who is credited for his contributions to the Law of Indiaparticularly Muslim Personal Law as well as the development of political philosophy for Muslims during the British Raj. He was a signatory to the 1906 Quran Petition and founding member of the All India Muslim League.
Syed Ameer Ali traced his lineage through the eighth Imam Ali Al-Raza to Muhammad. Forefathers of his are known to have held office under Shah Abbas II of Persia and taken part in Nadir Shah's invasion of India. After the plunder of Delhi the family line then settled in the Sub-continent and started serving Muhammad Shah. Another of his forefathers fought against Maratha Empire in the third battle of Panipat. Finally when his grandfather died, his father Saadat Ali Khan was brought up and educated by Syed's maternal uncle.
He was born on 6 April 1849 at Cuttack in Orissa as the fourth of five sons of Syed Saadat Ali. His father moved the family to Calcutta, and then to Chinsura where they settled more permanently among the ashraf elite. His family took advantage of the educational facilities provided by the British government but otherwise shunned by the Muslim community. With the assistance of his British teachers and supported by several competitive scholarships, he achieved outstanding examination results, graduating from Calcutta University in 1867, and gaining an MA with Honours in History in 1868. The LLB followed quickly in 1869. He then began legal practice in Calcutta. By this point he was already one of the few outstanding Muslim achievers of his generation.[3]
A Muslim, sometimes spelled Moslem is a follower of the religion of Islam a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the Quran. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts called hadith.Muslim is an Arabic word meaning "one who submits to God.A female Muslim is sometimes called a Muslimah .
Odisha formerly known as Orissa is an Indian state on the subcontinent's east coast, by the Bay of Bengal. It is surrounded by the Indian states of West Bengal to the north-east and in the east, Jharkhand to the north, Chhattisgarh to the west and north-west and Andhra Pradesh to the south. It is the modern name of the ancient kingdom of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka in 261 BCE. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April 1936 as a province in British India and consisted predominantly of Oriya speakers.1 April is therefore celebrated as Utkala Dibasa foundation day of Odisha. The region is also known as Utkala when mentioned in India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana. Cuttack remained the capital of the state for over eight centuries until 13 April 1948 when Bhubaneswar was officially declared as the new state capital, a position it still holds.
The Bay of Bengal, the largest bay in the world,[3] forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Roughly triangular in shape, it is bordered mostly by India and Sri Lanka to the west, Bangladesh to the north, and Burma (Myanmar) and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the east.
The Bay of Bengal occupies an area of 2,172,000 km². A number of large rivers – the Ganges and its distributaries such as Padma and Hooghly, the Brahmaputra and its distributaries such as Jamuna and Meghna, other rivers such as Irrawaddy River, Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna and Kaveri flow into the Bay of Bengal. Among the important ports are Chennai, Chittagong, Kolkata, Mongla, Paradip, Tuticorin, Visakhapatnam and Yangon.
Odisha is the 9th largest state by area in India, and the 11th largest by population. Oriya officially spelled Odia is the official and most widely spoken language spoken by three quarters of the population. Odisha has a coastline about 480 km long and lacked good ports except for the deepwater facility at Paradip, until the recent launch of the Dhamra Port. The narrow level coastal strip, including the Mahanadi river delta supports the bulk of the population.
It was carved out of the southern part of Bihar on 15 November 2000. Jharkhand shares its border with the states of Bihar to the north, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to the west Odisha to the south, and West Bengal to the east. It has an area of 79,710 km2 30,778 sq mi .
The industrial city Ranchi is its capital and Dumka is sub capital, Jamshedpur is the largest and the biggest industrial city of the state, while Dhanbad the coal capital of India is the second most populous city.
The name Jharkhand means "The Land of Forests. Jharkhand accounts for 40% of the mineral resources of India.
In 1877 Syed Ameer Ali had formed the Central National Muhammadan Association to work towards the political advancement of the Indian Muslims who had suffered grievously in 1857 in the aftermath of the failed Sepoy Mutiny against the East India Company; the British were seen as foreign invaders. But the organization declined towards the end of the 19th century
Lord Minto met with the Muslim delegation in June 1906. The Minto Morley Reforms of 1909 called for separate Muslim electorates.
In 1885 the Indian National Congress was founded as a forum which later became a party to promote a nationalist cause Although the Congress attempted to include the Muslim community in the struggle for independence from the British rule - and some Muslims were very active in the Congress - the majority of Muslim leaders did not trust the party viewing it as organization.Some Muslims felt that an independent united India would inevitably be and that there was a need to address the issue of the Muslim identity within India.
A turning point came in 1900 when the British administration in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh acceded to Hindu demands and made Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, the official language. The proslytisation conducted in the region by the activists of a new Hindu reformist movement also stirred Muslim's concerns about their faith. Eventually the Muslims feared that the Hindu majority would seek to suppress Muslim culture and religion in the region of an independent India.
After moving to London, where he stayed between 1869 and 1873 joined the Inner Temple and made contacts with the elite of the city. He absorbed the influence of contemporary liberalism. He had contacts with almost all the administrators concerned with India and with leading English liberals such as John Bright and the Fewcetts, Henry 1831–1898 and his wife, Millicent Fawcett 1847-1929.
He resumed his legal practice at Calcutta High Court on his return to India in 1873. The year after, he was elected as a Fellow of Calcutta University as well as being appointed as a lecturer in Islamic Law at the Presidency College, Kolkata. In 1878, he was appointed as the member of the Bengal Legislative Council. He revisited England in 1880 for one year.
In 1883 he was nominated to the membership of the Governor General Council. He became a professor of law in Calcutta University in 1881. In 1890 he was made a judge in the Calcutta High Court. He founded the political organisation, Central National Muhamedan Association, in Calcutta in 1877. This made him the first Muslim leader to put into practice the need for such an organisation due to the belief that efforts directed through an organisation would be more effective than those originating from an individual leader. The Association played an important role in the modernisation of Muslims and in arousing their political consciousness. He was associated with it for over 25 years, and worked for the political advancement of the Muslims.
He established the London Muslim League in 1908. This organisation was an independent body and not a branch of All India Muslim League. In 1909, he became the first Indian to sit as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. On appointment to the Privy Council he became entitled to be addressed as The Rt Hon.
In 1910 he established the first mosque in London. In doing so he formally co-established the London Mosque Fund, alongside a group of prominent British Muslims, to finance the building of the mosque in the capital. His field of activities was now broadened and he stood for Muslim welfare all over the world. He played an important role in securing separate electorates for the Muslims in South Asia and promoting the cause of the Khilafat Movement.
He retired in 1904 and decided to settle down in England where he was out of the way of the main current of Muslim political life. Through his career in general he became a jurist and well-known Islamic scholar. He died on August 4, 1928 in Sussex.
Ali's record as the only Muslim privy councillor in British history was only broken a century later in June 2009 when Sadiq Khan was appointed as Minister of State for Transport with membership of the Privy Council.
