Shi'as in Britain: The Earliest Cases (Part 2)

The First Shi'a Author in English who was also the First Shi'a Restaurateur and Founder of the First Shampooing (Therapeutic Massage) Saloon in England

Sake Dean Mahomed² [Sheikh Din Mohammad] (c. 1759-1851) was a Shi'a Muslim who made some very interesting contributions to the social life of his adopted country, England.

Sake Dean Mahomed [Sheikh Din Mohammad]³ Courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove (Public Domain)

Din Mohammad (Dean Mahomed/Dean Mahomet), as he himself had asserted, was "descended from a marriage between two Shi'ite immigrant families – respectively Afshar Turk and Arab ethnic origin – drawn to India from Iran [in the seventeenth century] by the richness of the Mughal imperial court⁴ and [the lure of honourable service to the Mughal Empire]".⁵

As a result of the Mughal Emperors losing their grip on their power over India in the eighteenth century, a number of separate Imperial courts emerged in different parts of the Subcontinent.⁶ Two of these dynasties, one ruling over Oudh (Awadh/Oude) (1722-1856) in the central Gangetic, and the other consisting of Nawabs (1740-1854) ruling over Bengal and Bihar in Eastern India, were Shi'a. Din Mohammad claimed kinship with this latter dynasty.⁷

Din Mohammad was born in "Patna, a famous city on the north side of the Ganges, about 400 miles from Calcutta, the capital of Bengal and seat of the English Government in that country",⁸ in 1759. His childhood coincided with the expansion of the power and activities of the East India Company.⁹ The Company, which had initially come to India for trade purposes, gradually expanded its sphere of influence and metamorphosised into a land-grabbing, colonizing agency: "Between 1757 and 1857, the Company annexed two-thirds of Indian territory while the remaining third came under its indirect rule through subordinating Indian 'Princes'".¹⁰ From 1858, after the mutiny of the Indian Sepoy¹¹ in 1857 and until the independence of India, the country was ruled by the British Crown, which had taken over the task of governing India from the Company.¹² Many of Muslim and Hindu families, in order to make ends meet, had no choice but to seek employment with the Company.¹³ Din Mohammad followed his father and elder brother to join the Company's Army. His father, who was "descended from the same race as the Nabobs [Nawabs] of Moorshadabad [Mushirdabad]"¹⁴ had died when Din Mohammad was eleven years old.¹⁵ Din Mohammad joined the Company shortly after his father's death in 1769.¹⁶

In the Army, he found a patron, Godfrey Evan Baker, who was at the time, "a teenage Protestant Anglo-Irish officer".¹⁷ Baker was from a landholding family in Ireland. The friendship between Din Mohammad and Baker remained until the latter's death eighteen years later in 1786.¹⁸ The two friends progressed together in their army ranks.¹⁹ While Baker's rank rose from cadet to Captain (subaltern) to independent command, Din Mohammad rose to the rank of "Market-master,²⁰ Jemidar²¹ and finally Subedar²² (which was the same rank held by his father) in the Captain Battalion".²³

(1.) A Native Officer; (2.) A Sepoy (Dean Mahomet 1794, Letter XVI, reproduced in Fisher 1996)²⁴

During his years of active service in the East India Company's Army, he travelled to many parts of India and observed, with the eyes of a keen observer, the diverse and rich natural environments, social customs, and forms of life in India.²⁵ After thirteen years of active service in the Army, he decided to resign his post and accompany Captain Baker to Europe.²⁶ As for the reason for his decision, he has given the following explanation in his Travels:

A few months after our arrival at Chunargur, Captain Baker disclosed his intentions of going to Europe: having a desire of seeing that part of the world, and convinced that I should suffer much uneasiness...