Hakim Ajmal Khan

He was born in Delhi into a line of Unani physicians who had come to India in the reign of the Mughal emperor Babur; his grandfather Hakim Sharif Khan, physician to Shah Alam II, had built the Sharif Manzil, a hospital-cum-college where poor patients were treated free ¹. The Arabic biography pairs his birth date itself: 11 February 1868 with 17 Shawwal 1284 AH ². The year is nonetheless contested: the English article's text and Wikidata give 11 February 1864 ¹³, the Urdu article gives 12 February 1868 ⁴, and the Arabic and Urdu articles' birth categories file him under 1863. As a child he memorised the Qur'an and studied Arabic and Persian before turning to medicine under his senior relatives, completing his studies under Hakim Abdul Jameel ¹.

On qualifying in 1892 he became chief physician to the Nawab of Rampur ¹. He was reputed to diagnose illness from a patient's face, charged a thousand rupees a day for out-of-town visits, and treated patients who came to Delhi free, whatever their station ¹. To save the Unani system from extinction under British rule he built three institutions: the Central College in Delhi, the Hindustani Dawakhana and the Tibbia College, and he proposed absorbing Western concepts into Unani practice, against the Lucknow school which wanted to preserve its purity ¹. He was honoured with the titles Haziq-ul-Mulk and, by his followers, Masih-ul-Mulk, "Healer of the Nation" ⁴¹.

He entered politics through his family's Urdu weekly Akmal-ul-Akhbar, headed the Muslim delegation to the Viceroy at Simla in 1906, and took part in the founding of the All-India Muslim League at Dhaka at the end of that year ¹. From 1917 he worked with Gandhi and with Azad, Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali in the Khilafat movement, and he remains the only person to have presided over the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the All India Khilafat Committee alike ¹. As chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia from 22 November 1920 he oversaw its move from Aligarh to Delhi and repeatedly rescued it from financial crisis with his own money ¹.

No article names a school or an order for Ajmal Khan himself: the English article's infobox lists "Sufi Mystic" among his occupations, a lone structured descriptor that no article text supports with any account of initiation or discipleship ¹, and Wikidata records his religion as Islam only ³. The museum's data record therefore leaves his school unknown and sets out the evidence exactly.

He died of heart trouble on 29 December 1927 — the English article's infobox internally prints 20 December against its own text, a slip the record does not follow ¹ — and was buried near the Tibbia College at Karol Bagh, where other members of his family also lie ². Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari succeeded him as chancellor of the Jamia ¹. The drugs ajmaline and ajmalan are named after him ¹.

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