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Seyyid Amir 'ali

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"SEYYID AMIR `ALI (1849-), Indian jurist and Moslem leader, was born April 6 1849, of an Arab family tracing descent from the Prophet, which. migrated from Persia and settled at Mohan in Oudh in the middle of the 18th century. At Hugli College, Calcutta, he graduated in 1867, proceeding to his M.A. degree a year later. Receiving a State scholarship, he came to London and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1873. He had already published A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mahomed, the first of a series of books of Islamic modernist interpretation and apologetics which have given him a recognized place in English literature, viz. The Spirit of Islam (1893), Short History of the Saracens (1899; third ed. 1921) and Ethics of Islam (1893). For some years a lecturer on Mohammedan law at the Presidency College, Calcutta, and afterwards president of the Faculty of Law at the university there, his textbooks on Mohammedan law and other legal works are marked by careful scholarship and characteristic lucidity. He was for some time chief presidency magistrate of Calcutta, but for the most part was engaged in practice, literature and non-official public affairs as a member of the Bengal Legislature and later of the Viceroy's Legislature until 1890, when he was appointed a judge of the Bengal High Court, being the first Mohammedan to reach the bench in India. Retiring in 1904 and settling in England, he was the first Indian to be sworn (Nov. 1909) of the Privy Council and to serve (unsalaried, but later with a small indemnity for expenses) on the Judicial Committee, where he gave the greatest assistance to his English colleagues in elucidating the intricacies of Indian law and custom. But his chief ambition in life was the advancement of the Indian Moslems, both morally and materially, along practical and constitutional lines. While cooperating with Sir Seyyid Ahmad Khan ( see 24.277) in overthrowing communal apathy and obscurantism as regards Western education, he deprecated his advocacy of detachment from political activity. His establishment in 1877 of the Central National Mohammedan Association, with branches throughout India, the memorial to the Government of India he promoted in 1883, and the consequent resolution of the Governor-General (Lord Dufferin) in Council in March 1885, recognizing the strength of the Moslem claims, constituted a turning-point in the history of the community, and paved the way for its fuller political organization and the reservation of Moslem seats in the legislatures under the Morley-Minto and subsequent reforms. His sustained and anxious interest in the maintenance of Moslem virility and influence throughout the world was shown by vigorous and cogent contributions to newspapers and reviews.