Early in February 1978, as a young research student, I visited Jamal Mian's residence in Clifton, Karachi. Typical of the sociability of the man who Francis Robinson reveals in his biography, the scion of the Lucknow Farangi Mahall family, troubled to speak at length on his role in the Pakistan Movement. Like his father Abdul Bari, during the earlier Khilafat movement, Jamal Mian played a leading role in the freedom struggle. It was a position that he was born to. He grew up in a Lucknow world suffused with learning, piety, and politics. Francis Robinson reveals, for example, that Gandhi stayed in a house at Farangi Mahall, known as the Walagarh Mosque, during the Khilafat campaign (p.30). Nehru invited the seventeen-year-old Jamal Mian to the platform of the 1936 Congress Annual Session at Lucknow (p.101). Eighteen months later, Jinnah allowed him to speak at the Muslim League session held in the city (p.5). Thereafter, Jamal Mian, with his close friend, the Raja of Mahmudabad, threw himself into campaigning for the Muslim League. He rapidly rose to sit on its Working Committee and served as Joint Assistant Secretary of the All-India Organisation.

In 1978, Jamal Mian continued to visit the ancestral home in Lucknow, where, from the time of Aurangzeb, the family had lived as learned and holy men. Francis Robinson had met him in London two years earlier and was already using the family archive. Over the next two decades he immersed himself in the life of Farangi Mahall. His publications were to be brought together in the collection ‘The ‘Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia’ (Delhi, 2001). Following Jamal Mian's death in 2012, his second son Mahmood made available his father's papers. They included items such as correspondence with the Raja of Mahmudabad, tapes, poems, annotated books, and the diaries of Jamal Mian and of Hasrat Mohani. They form the rich source material that underpins this illuminating biography. Like all good biographies, the volume not only contextualises its subject's life, but reveals new insights into the times in which they lived. It sheds light for example on the ‘long partition’ of the North Indian elite. Jamal Mian sought to materially sustain the educational infrastructure of Farangi Mahall in Lucknow through business activities aided by the Ispahanis in Dacca in the East Bengal, province of Pakistan. In the early 1950s, he lived in both India and Pakistan and moved with their political elites. In May 1952, Jamal Mian's diary reveals that he had tea with Nehru in Delhi's South Block (p. 251). Less than six months later, he was meeting the increasingly powerful Pakistan Governor-General Ghulam Mohamed in Karachi (p. 252). Earlier in November 1952, he had given advice to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, although he was an Indian citizen (p. 256). It was only in 1957 that he took up Pakistani citizenship. The circumstances in which he eventually had to do this form another interesting insight not only into his life, but into the interactions of North Indian and Pakistani elites. Nehru on occasions assisted Jamal Mian with visas (p. 359) and would have addressed his final passport problems if Jamal Mian had let him.

Jamal Mian established his family in Dhaka in East Pakistan. The links with Lucknow were retained in the devotional life he followed, and in naming his newly built house, Darul Qiam (Place of Stability) as a tribute to his father Abdul Bari (p. 260). For a while, the old political connections were also restored when Choudhry Khaliquzzaman, who had worked with Abdul Bari during the Khilafat campaign, served as Governor of East Pakistan. Later whilst living in Dhaka, Jamal Mian was close to Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan who between them snuffed out Pakistan's first experiment with democracy.

The move from Dhaka to Karachi came in the wake of the break-up of Pakistan in 1971. The national tragedy was echoed in the wrecking of Jamal Mian's business interests in East Pakistan. However, he restored his fortunes through the money paid for his shares in the Shakarganj Sugar Mill in Jhang (p. 304). In July 1963, the Nawab of Kalalbagh, Ayub Khan's ruthless Governor of West Pakistan (1960-66) had allotted the licence to him (p. 298). Here the biography, sheds fresh light on Jamal Mian's relationship with Ayub Khan during his early years as Pakistan's first military ruler. It also provides insights into the emergence of the nexus between patronage, politicians and the sugar industry which is currently generating great controversy in Pakistan.

During Jamal Mian's extended retirement in Karachi, he frequently travelled abroad as younger family members, like those from many elite families, spread their wings and became part of the growing Pakistani Diaspora. He was also involved with Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami (World Islamic League) which enabled him to often visit the Hejaz (p. 320). Despite a circle of friends and the recreation of important aspects of the Farangi Mahall devotional year, his illness in 1982 ended his association with Lucknow. He thus emotionally and psychologically came painfully to terms with the long decline of Farangi Mahall as North India's premier institution of religious instruction. This had begun in the later colonial era with the inroads of the forces of Islamic reformism and western education. Until the end of his life in 2012, Jamal Mian personally upheld Faranghi Mahall's values of scholarship and spirituality in the face of Pakistan's growing politicisation of Islam with its attendant encouragement of sectarianism.

Francis Robinson with great empathy explores this aspect of Jamal Mian's life. He writes with poignancy when capturing Jamal Mian's final years which were cut off from the family roots in the Farangi Mahall complex and from the shrine culture of North India. Jamal Mian was able in part to compensate for this loss by frequent trips to the Prophet's tomb in Medina. The annual highlight at Farangi Mahall had always been the milad (lectures in praise of the Prophet) on the first twelve days of Rabiulawwal. I suspect that Francis Robinson found greatest pleasure in writing the earlier part of the volume where he sets out the influence of the family heritage on Jamal Mian's life. In addition to Abdul Bari's political legacy, he explores Jamal Mian's cultural capital. He does this by drawing on his unique knowledge of both the Farangi Mahall syallabus of the Dars-i-Nizami in which Jamal Mian was taught, and of the family's devotional life.

This biography is the product of a lifetime of scholarship. It represents an immensely important contribution in understanding the impact of Partition on the North Indian Muslim ashraf elite. It also opens a window into a tradition of learning and spirituality which is crucial for the appreciation of that elite's religious and intellectual history. In a world which has seen a narrowed space for forms of Islamic enlightenment, it is important to be reminded of Jamal Mian's values and expression of Islam.