Ali Khan Mahmudabad

Ali Khan Mahmudabad (born 2 December 1982) is an Indian historian, political scientist, writer, columnist, occasional poet, and assistant professor of both history and political science at Ashoka University, India. He is the grandson of Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan, the Raja of Mahmudabad. Background and early life His father, Sulaiman, Raja of Mahmudabad, is the only son of Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan, the last ruling Raja of Mahmudabad and long-time treasurer and major financier of the Muslim League in the years leading up to the partition of India. Ali's mother, Rani Vijay, a Hindu by birth, is the daughter of Jagat Singh Mehta and sister of Vikram Mehta. Ali grew up in Mahmudabad, India. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College where he graduated with a double major in history and political science in the year 2006. Following this, he studied advanced level Arabic from the University of Damascus. By 2010, he had earned an MPhil in Historical Studies from the University of Cambridge (Girton College, Cambridge), and by 2014, he also secured his PhD in history from Cambridge. His dissertation was on "Rhetorics and Spaces of Belonging among North Indian Muslims, 1850- 1950" under supervision of Professor Sir Christopher Bayly and Professor Javed Majeed. Education Ali did his schooling up until the 5th grade from La Martiniere Lucknow, following which he went to England to study at King's College School till 1996. He graduated school from Winchester College in the year 2001 and began his university studies at Amherst College, where he played for the Varsity Squash Team. He graduated from Amherst, with a thesis on 'Iran and the evolution of Velayat-e-faqih Islamic Jurisprudence'.