Syed Mahmood

Syed Mahmood (24 May 1850 – 8 May 1903), known by the title Justice, was a puisne judge of the High Court in the North-Western Provinces of British India from 1887 to 1893, after serving in the High Court in a temporary capacity as officiating judge on four previous occasions since 1882. ¹ He was the first Indian jurist to be appointed to the High Court at Allahabad and the first Muslim to serve as a High Court judge in the British Raj, and he played a major role in assisting his father, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, in establishing the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, which later became Aligarh Muslim University. ¹

Syed Mahmood was born in Delhi on 24 May 1850, the second son of Syed Ahmad Khan, and studied in Moradabad and Aligarh, cities to which his father had been posted, as well as at Government College in Delhi and Queen's College in Benares, before passing his Matriculation Examination at the University of Calcutta in 1868 and receiving a British government scholarship to study in England. ¹ In 1869 Mahmood was admitted to Lincoln's Inn and in April 1872 he was called to the Bar; from 1870 he also studied Latin, Greek and oriental languages for two years at Christ's College, Cambridge, without graduating. ¹

After returning to India, Mahmood enrolled as a barrister in the High Court in Allahabad in 1872, the first Indian to achieve that distinction in that court, and worked as a barrister in Allahabad until 1878. ¹ In 1879 the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, appointed him a District and Sessions Judge in Oudh, his substantive Indian Civil Service appointment until 1887, when he was appointed Puisne Judge of the High Court at Allahabad, interrupted several times by temporary officiating appointments and briefly seconded to the Nizam in Hyderabad State in 1881 to assist with judicial administration. ¹ Mahmood received his first officiating appointment as a High Court judge in 1882, with lobbying on his behalf by Lord Ripon, and served as officiating judge three more times before his full appointment in 1887. ¹ On the bench he was known for lengthy, detailed written judgments published in the Law Reports; Whitley Stokes praised them in his Anglo-Indian Codes, and Kozlowski notes that his knowledge of Arabic, gained at Cambridge, was invaluable for assessing Muslim law. ¹ His opinions were very often rejected by the full bench of mostly British judges, and his prolixity and frequent dissents led to conflicts and eventually to an early retirement in 1893; Kozlowski attributes the retirement to pressure over his severe drunkenness, which Mahmood denied, blaming the jealousy of Chief Justice John Edge, while even his friends acknowledged it was a problem. ¹ After retiring he returned to practice as a barrister in Lucknow and served on the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Legislative Council from 1896 to 1898. ¹

Shortly after returning from England in 1872, Mahmood wrote a proposal for a self-supporting Muslim college in India on the Cambridge model, then assisted his father in founding the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, playing a vital role in its administration while working in Allahabad. ¹ In 1883 he returned to England to recruit Theodore Beck as the school's principal, taught English classes, helped establish a law programme, and donated a major portion of his legal collection to form its legal library. ¹ In 1889 his father nominated him Joint Secretary of the board of trustees; after his father's death in 1898 he served as Life Honorary Joint Secretary, was replaced by Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk in 1899, and was elevated to Honorary President. ¹ He was also a commissioner of the 1882 Education Commission under Ripon and lectured on the history of English education in India at the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference meetings of 1893 and 1894. ¹

Mahmood's first legal publication was an Urdu translation of the 1872 Law of Evidence, published in 1876; he published his revised lectures as A History of English Education in India in 1895, and his major written contribution was the approximately 300 legal judgments recorded in the Indian Law Reports: Allahabad Series between 1882 and 1892. ¹ In 1888 Mahmood married Musharraf Jahan, daughter of Nawab Khwajah Sharfuddin Ahmad, and they had one son, Ross Masood. ¹ In 1900, estranged from his family and the college, Mahmood moved to Sitapur, where he lived with his cousin Syed Muhammad Ahmad until his death in 1903. ¹

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