The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

From A Mighty Striving, biography of Maulana Muhammad Ali

On 26 April 1939 there occurred the death of Dr. Syed Muhammad Husain Shah. He had fallen ill a few days earlier, and on 26 April he had a fatal stroke which he did not survive. The Doctor sahib has been mentioned earlier from time to time. He was a member of the original Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya, Qadian, appointed by the Promised Messiah. It was in his house at Ahmadiyya Buildings, Lahore, that the Promised Messiah passed the last few days of his life and breathed his last. He was not only a God-fearing and righteous Ahmadi, but was a great philan­thropist and spender in the way of Allah. With his death a pillar of the Jama‘at was lost. Just at the time when he suffered the stroke, Maulana Muhammad Ali while praying in the small hours of the morning heard a voice saying again and again: “Carry him on your shoulders towards Allah”. Maulana Muhammad Ali’s thoughts turned to his elder bro­ther Maulana Aziz Bakhsh who was ill at that time, but soon he received the news of the Shah sahib’s ill­ness.

At this great loss, Maulana Muhammad Ali issued a message to the Jama‘at in Paigham Sulh, and in his Friday khutba while mentioning the unique personality of the Shah sahib and the ser­vices he rendered to the religion he said that, notwithstanding his previous financial sacrifices, the Shah sahib had just now donated property worth 52 thousand Rupees to the Jubilee fund and after that he agreed to give 200 Rupees per month per­manently to sup­port the Dutch mission. Maulana Muhammad Ali wrote:

“This high rank of excellence was in fact in fulfilment of the trust that the Promised Messiah had reposed in the late Shah sahib. When the Promised Messiah was informed by Allah of his own approaching death he made an Anjuman as his successor, and while selecting fourteen members for it he picked four from Lahore. These four were: the late Shaikh Rahmatullah, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Dr. Mirza Yaqub Baig and the Shah sahib. The excellence and sin­ceri­ty with which these four carried out the task entrusted to them by Hazrat Mirza sahib seems to be indicated in this Divine revelation: ‘In Lahore are our virtuous mem­bers’. These four friends had such passion to serve the Divine religion that they would travel from Lahore to attend every meeting of the Anjuman in Qadian and were always in the forefront in providing financial help. … I held the position of Secretary of the Anjuman. The advice of these four revered friends was a source of strength for me, and their sincerity made a deep imp­ression on me.

This was how, at the beginning of 1906, there began that friendship between the five of us which developed to the stage that we five became, as it were, one mind and heart. Now four of these friends, one by one, have gone to meet their Lord, and even though I see all around me true, sincere and faithful friends in our Jama‘at but after the departure of these four I feel somewhat alone. But ‘Allah is my Friend in this world and the hereafter’.

These four friends have set such a unique example of faithfulness, and of constancy and sincerity in the service of the religion, that it has few parallels today. The Messiah sent by God identified certain virtuous men to carry on his mission after him, and after Maulana Nur-ud-Din these four were the most prominent in this regard who bore the burden of work in practice. They discharged the trust placed upon them by the Promised Messiah so faithfully that they ever kept on making progress in the way of Allah.” (Paigham Sulh, 4 May 1939, p. 3)