Personal Law of the Mahommedans

Ali, Syed Ameer lawyer, spokesman on Indian Muslim concerns, and writer on Islamic history and society, was the Forthsons of Syed Saadat Ali, a descendant of a Shia family from Meshed in Iran. Ameer Ali’s great-grandfather had migrated from Iran with the army of Nadir Shah in 1739, serving thereafter at the Mughal and Awadh courts. Indeed, Ameer Ali’s greatest contribution was not political, for the confidence-boosting effects of his major publications which eulogised the ‘golden ages’ of Islam, and stressed the need for Muslims to come to terms with some of the changes caused by colonisation and Westernisation were his major achievements. If he had a lawyer’s approach to historical evidence, both in highlighting Islamic achievements and in condemning the shortcomings of other cultures, such buttressing of Muslim self-esteem was certainly a need of the hour. His progressive stance on the status and rights of women in Islam was one of his most notable contributions. He was admired by Islamic ‘modernists’ for his leadership in these causes. However, his voice, particularly in the crucial period of the 1870s, when Muslim spokespersons were few, was very influential in countering much misinformed or prejudiced Western criticism of Islamic history and society.