Sheikh Abdullah - Early Life

Early Life

The most important source of Sheikh Abdullah's early life is his official biography Atish e Chinar He was born in Soura, a village on the outskirts of Srinagar, eleven days after the death of his father Sheikh Mohammed Ibrahim, a middle class manufacturer and trader of Kashmir shawls. Sheikh Ibrahim was the descendant of a Hindu Kashmiri Pandit named Ragho Ram Koul who was converted to Islam in 1890 by the saint Rashid Balkhi and after conversion changed his name to Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah. Thus Sheikh Abdullah was the namesake of the progenitor of his family branch.

According to Sheikh Abdullah, his step brother mistreated his mother and his early childhood was marked by utter poverty. His mother was keen that her children should receive proper education and so as a child he was first admitted to a traditional school or Maktab where he learnt the recitation of the Koran and some basic Persian texts like Gulistan of Sa'di, Bostan, Padshanama, etc. Then in 1911 he was admitted to a primary school where he studied for about two years. His elder step brothers then stopped his further education and he was first set to work in the family workshop embroidering shawls and later asked to sit on a grocers shop as a sales boy.

However, their family barber Mohammed Ramzan prevailed upon his uncle to send him back to school. He had to walk the distance of ten miles to school and back on foot but in his own words the joy of being allowed to obtain a school education made it seem a light work. He passed his Matriculation examination from Punjab University in 1922.