Syed Amjad Ali

Syed Amjad Ali (5 July 1907 – 5 March 1997) was a Pakistani civil servant and politician of the British Raj era. He served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States from 1953 to 1955, as its third minister of finance from 1956 to 1958, and as its permanent representative to the United Nations from 1964 to 1967. No Arabic Wikipedia article exists for him; this account is written from the English and Urdu articles and the Wikidata item. ^{1 2 3}

He was born at Lahore, the eldest son of Sir Syed Maratib Ali, a prominent Muslim businessman in the Punjab; Syed Babar Ali and Syed Wajid Ali were his younger brothers. The English article's own editorial note preserves a variant of his birth date, 7 May, as it was written on his travel document to Washington; the date followed here is 5 July 1907, which the article, the Urdu article and Wikidata all give. He was educated at the St. Agnes Loreto Convent in Lucknow, then at the Muslim High School and Government College in Lahore. After taking his B.A. in 1927 he went to London for legal studies at the Middle Temple, where he served as honorary secretary of the Muslim delegations at the first Round Table Conference in 1930–31 and for the Indian delegation at the second Round Table Conference at the end of 1931. ^{1 2}

He returned home and worked for his father's company, A. & M. Wazir Ali, which included a Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Karachi. He was appointed an OBE in the 1936 Birthday Honours and a CIE in the 1944 Birthday Honours. In the last years of British rule he worked closely with Fazl-i-Hussain and Sikandar Hayat Khan, described in the article as two giants of pre-partition Punjab politics, while sitting in the Punjab Legislative Assembly from 1937 to 1945 and in the Constituent Assembly of India in 1946. ¹

After independence he served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States (1953–1955), as minister of finance (1956–1958, under prime ministers Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, I. I. Chundrigar and Feroz Khan Noon), and as Pakistan's permanent representative to the United Nations (1964–1967). The New York Times obituary that the article cites said of him that he was among those who worked to gain Pakistan a place of recognition in world affairs. ¹

His books, as the articles list them, are: The United Nations and I: 1950–1993; Glimpses (1992), his autobiography; Prints & Imprints; and Ustad Bashir ud Din: the last master from Lahore School of Painters. ^{1 2}

He died at Lahore on 5 March 1997, aged 89. ^{1 3}

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