Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy Con-

tinuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and Its 

Medieval Background (Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1989); Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, Ahmadiyyat: 

The Renaissance of Islam (London: Tabshir Publications, 

1978).

Ahmad Khan, (Sir) Sayyid

 

(1817–1898)   

Indian Muslim religious reformer, political figure, and 

educator

Sayyid Ahmad Khan was among the first to call 

for the reform of Islam in order to make it more 

compatible with modern Western thinking, the 

results of which gave Muslims more of a voice 

in public life under British rule. When the Brit-

ish put down the Muslim-Hindu uprising against 

them in 1857 and abolished the m

Ughal

 

dynasty

,

Ahmad Khan felt that the only way for Muslims to 

recover their influential role in i

ndia

 was to mod-

ernize their religion and cooperate with British 

authorities. While many credit him with inspiring 

the Muslim nationalist movement that led to the 

creation of p

akistan

 in 1947, others see him more 

as a modernizer and educator who valued the idea 

of Hindu and Muslim cooperation with the British 

in governing India.

Ahmad Khan was born to a family claiming 

to be descendants of Muhammad, but of Persian 

heritage, in d

elhi

, India. He received a limited 

formal education in Urdu and Persian in prepara-

tion for government service as other members of 

his family had done for generations. After holding 

a string of appointments as a minor judge in a 

number of north Indian towns during his 20s, he 

K  24