ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the legal career of Saiyid Amir Ali, the first Indian and first Muslim judge on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. At least since the 1770s, East India Company officials, judges and scholars had been engaged in projects of discovering what they called by variations of the term Muhammadan law. In contrast to his quiet presence in the Inner Temple, Amir Ali led a hectic social life outside. Insider knowledge of a different kind was claimed by analysing legal principles in social context, with the implicit assertion that one had to know the social life of the community in order to understand its laws. Working his way up through various magistracies, Amir Ali began establishing himself as an authority on Islamic law. Personal Law began with a historical and juridical introduction to Islamic law. In Personal Law, Amir Ali had made an effort to efface and underplay his debt to the British and Indian Orientalists.
