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Syed Mohammad Amir Imam obituary

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My father, Syed Mohammad Amir Imam, who has died aged 85, was a writer with the nom de plume Hurr (meaning "free"). He wrote poetry and prose in Urdu, his native tongue, as well as English, Persian and classical Arabic.

Born and brought up in Lucknow, son of Syed Raza Imam, a lawyer, and his wife Bibi Baqir-un-Nisa, he came from two distinguished families of northern India. His paternal grandfather was the lawyer and statesman Sir Syed Ali Imam; his maternal grandfather was Maharaja Sir Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan of Mahmudabad, member of the executive council of the Governors of the United Provinces. His maternal uncle and future father-in-law was the Raja of Mahmudabad, Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan, a close lieutenant of MA Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

My father received his early education at La Martinière college, Lucknow, followed by Colvin college, before coming to the UK for a university education in 1948. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he studied for the Moral Sciences Tripos under the philosophers John Wisdom and Charles Broad, before turning to the Oriental Sciences Tripos under the tutelage of Arthur Arberry and GM Wickens. While there, he also made lifelong friends, including the future Nobel laureate Abdus Salam.

He undertook various jobs, in banking, advertising, teaching and tourism, in Baghdad, Karachi and finally in London, but all the time he was writing poetry and prose, in four of the six languages he knew. His most recent work was a Miltonian epic poem of more than 10,600 lines in Urdu, an account of some tragic events in the early history of Islam concerning a family's struggle against injustice.

He produced a considerable body of literature on moral and ethical issues, seen from within his Islamic heritage as well as from a universal human viewpoint. He was also very much interested in mathematics and the natural sciences, liked classical music and the arts, and had a great sense of humour.

In 1950 he was married to his cousin Amatul Husain Khan, who outlived him by only a few weeks. They are survived by six children, as well as five grandchildren and a great-grandson.


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