Ubaidullah Al Ubaidi Suhrawardy
Ubaidullah Al Ubaidi Suhrawardy (1832–1885) was an educationist and writer, was born in the famous Suhrawardy family of Chitwa in Midnapore, West Bengal.
Marriage and family
Ubaidullah was directly descended from the Sufi mystic and saint Shaikh Shahabuddin Suhrawardy, who lived in Baghdad in the 12th Century. Shaikh Shahabuddin was the author of what came to be regarded as the standard work on mysticism Awriful-Maariffi. He was a disciple and successor of Shaikh Abdul-Qadir Gilani, and the mosques and shrines over their tombs still survive in Baghdad and are places of pilgrimage to this day.
He was also a descendant of Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi.
Ubaidullah's father was Shah Aminuddin Suhrawardy (the last Pir (Sufism) in the Suhrawardy family). He had two brothers both of whom were lawyers and subordinate judges (the highest rank available to Indians under British rule at the time). One of his brothers' was named Maulvi Mubarak Ali Suhrawardy alias Mohammad Ali.
One of Ubaidullah's son Sir Abdullah Al-Mamun Suhrawardy earned fame in academia while another son, Lt. Col. Dr. Hassan Suhrawardy, OBE became famous in politics. His daughter, Khujastha Akhtar Banu (c. 1874–1919) was a noted name in Urdu literature and scholar of Persian and mother of Hassan Shahid Suhrawardy and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy.
Ubaidullah's other children included: Mr Mamun Suhrawardy, Mr Mahmud Suhrawardy (a politician who was a Member of the Council of State), Humayun Akhtar Banu Begum and another daughter. He had 8 children in total.
Life and career
He learnt Arabic and Persian at home and then passed the Final Central Examinations (1857) from the Madrasa ʿAliya of Calcutta. He also learnt English on his own. He was first employed as an aide to Prince Jalaluddin, a grandson of Tipu Sultan of Mysore in Calcutta, and then was appointed as a scrivener to the translation department of the Legislative Council of the Viceroy of India.
In 1865 he joined Hooghly Mohsin College (then affiliated with the University of Calcutta) as a teacher of Anglo-Arabic. He was appointed the first superintendent of Dhaka Madrasah in 1874 and remained there till his death. A social reformer, he was a man of secular, rational and liberal bent. He was a friend of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
Ubaidullah was also one of the founders of the Dacca Maddrassah, which was one of the very first trilingual schools with an international curriculum in the sub-continent.
Ubaidullah was a follower of Nawab Abdul Latif and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He was affiliated with the Mohammedan Literary Society (1863), Central National Mohammedan Association (1877), Bengal Social Science Association and other organisations in Caluctta. He was also a member of the managing committee of the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh (1875). He founded an organisation called Samaj Sammilani Sabha (1879) that survived for a short period. He encouraged students of Dhaka College to found the Dhaka Mussalman Suhrid Sammilani (1883) (a reformist and community development organisation).
Ubaidullah wrote books in Urdu, Arabic, Persian and English and translated many works. Noted among his works are Grammar of Arabic Language, Urdu Diwan (Urdu poems, 1880), Farsi Dewan (Persian poems, 1886), Dastar-e-Parsi Amuz (Persian grammar), Lubbul Arab (Arabic grammar), Miftahul Adab (Urdu grammar), Dabistan-i-Danish Amuz (Urdu, physics), Dastar-e-Farsi Amuz (Persian, rhythm and rhetorics), Dastan-i-Ibratbar (Persian, autobiography). With the assistance of Syed Amir Ali, he rendered Makhaz-ul-Ulm by Syed Keramat Ali into English as a Treatise on the Sciences (1867) and Rammohun Roy's Tuhfatul Muwahedin into English in 1884. His Mohammedan Education in Bengal (1867) is an original work on education. He edited Guide (Urdu) and Durbeen (Persian). A number of his manuscripts on philology, psychology, women's education, in Urdu, still remain unpublished. He also understood basic Latin and Greek.
The Indian government awarded him the title Bahrul Ulm (Sea of knowledge) in recognition of his contribution to knowledge, education and society. The Bahrul Ulm Ubaidi Suhrawardy medal, named after him, is still awarded by the University of Dhaka. Acharya Harinath De made an oil painting of him as a token of respect.
Ubaidullah died in Dhaka on 4 February 1885.