Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Dr. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 14 October 1840 to a Jewish family. His mother was Marie Henriette Herzberg. His father, Leopold Saphir, died when Gottlieb was young and his mother then married Johann Moritz Leitner. Gottlieb and his sister Elisabeth (the mother of British politician Leopold Amery) were thereafter known as Leitner.

As a child Leitner showed an extraordinary ability in languages. At the age of eight he went to Constantinople to learn Arabic and Turkish, and by the age of ten he was fluent in Turkish, Arabic and most European languages. At fifteen, he was appointed Interpreter (First Class) to the British Commissariat in the Crimea, with the rank of colonel. When the Crimean War ended, he wanted to become a priest and went to study at King's College London.

It is also reported that during his tour of Muslim countries he adopted a Muslim name of Abdur Rasheed Sayyah. Sayyah in Arabic means a traveller.

As a linguist, he is said to have had acquaintance with some fifty languages many of which he spoke fluently. At nineteen, he became lecturer in Arabic, Turkish and Modern Greek, and at twenty-three was appointed Professor in Arabic and Muslim Law at King's College London.

Three years later, sometime in 1864, he was asked to become Principal of Government College at Lahore (now Pakistan), and soon succeeded in raising its status to the University of the Punjab. He founded many schools, literary associations, public libraries and academic journals, while at the same time dedicating himself to the study of the cultures of the Indian subcontinent. During this period he wrote a scholarly and comprehensive book in Urdu, History of Islam, in two volumes, with the help of an Urdu Muslim scholar, Maulvi Karim-ud-Din, who was at that time District Inspector of Schools, Amritsar, Punjab. These two volumes were later published in 1871 and 1876.

He retired from the Indian Service in 1886.