Saeed Ahmad Khan
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Saeed Ahmad Khan (سيد احمد خان in Urdu) (1900-1996, (Emir 1981-1996) was an adherent, and later leader, of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, religious movement which evolved as a sect of Islam.
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[edit] Early life
Ahmad was born in the Hazara area of the North-West Frontier of British India (currently a part of Pakistan). His father, Maulana Muhammad Yahya, and uncle, Maulana Muhammad Yaqub, were already members of the Ahmadiyya Movement. At the age of six, he included his name on a postcard from his village to take the bai'at (Oath of Allegiance) with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian. He was the last person belonging to the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement to take bai'at at Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's own hand, at the age of eight years. He went with his father in December 1907 to Qadian and stayed there for some three months in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's company.
[edit] Education
He went again in 1912, to study in the Ahmadiyya school in Qadian, known as the Taleem-ul-Islam High School, and the following year he obtained admission. In 1914, when the Maulana Nur-ud-Din Khalifatul Masih I died, a split in the Ahmadiyya Movement took place, and Ahmad returned home to continue his education in the local city of Abbottabad. He then studied at King Edward's Medical College, Lahore, where he obtained a Medical degree in 1925. He was the first Muslim at the College to receive a Medal for his studies. In Lahore he attended Maulana Muhammad Ali's lectures on the Qur'an and became his follower. He became the first president of the Ahmadiyya Young men's Association. He was Hafiz of the Qur'an and competent in Classical Arabic.
[edit] Career
After qualifying, Ahmad joined the government's Health Department and specialised in chest diseases. In 1939, he became the first superintendent of the government's Tuberculosis Sanatorium at Dadar in the North-West Frontier, and held this post until 1964. He was awarded the title Khan Bahadar by the British government of India and the title Sitara-i Khidmat by the government of Pakistan.
He retired as a doctor in 1964, but continued as a General Practitioner in Abbottabad, treating the poor free of charge. He also built a mosque close to his house and ran a residential summer school there, for the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. He settled in Lahore, from his home in 1974, following the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of the summer of that year in Pakistan. The inciters encouraged mob attacks against Ahmadis throughout the country as part of their campaign to force the government of Pakistan to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims by law. Ahmad suffered losses with the burning down of his clinic and his house, and he received death threats for not renouncing his Ahmadi beliefs. He rebuffed attempts to drop the name "Ahmadiyya" from the name of the Movement in order to be accepted as Muslim by the instigators of the riots.
Ahmad was elected Head of the Movement in 1981, after previously being a senior Vice-president for several years. As President he travelled to the UK, USA, the Netherlands, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Surinam. He succeeded Maulana Sadr-ud-Din as Emir. He died in that role on Friday 15th November 1996 in Lahore, Pakistan, at 96 years of age. He was succeeded by Dr Asghar Hameed.
