Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 249
THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM 249 he called Sir Salar Jang Memorial House. He named the Mosque Shah Jehan Mosque in honour of Her Highness the Begum of Bhopal. The Mosque and the Memorial House were surrounded by a garden and formed a unit by them- selves adjacent to the area on part of which the Oriental Insti~ute had been erected. The whole project was carried through in the last years of the 19th century. Dr Leitner died some years later and the whole estate passed into the hands of his family headed by his eldest son. The Mosque and the Memorial House were looked after by the family but were not put to any practical use. The Rt Hon. Syed Ameer Ali, a reputed Muslim scholar and Judge, a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy council, and one or two other leading Muslims then in London approached the family of Dr Leitner with the request that as the Oriental Institute, the Mosque and the Memorial House had been constructed with funds provided by public-spirited Muslims of India, the entire estate was a Muslim foundation and its management should be committed to a Muslim body. The family of Dr Leitner resisted this demand and claimed that the estate was the property of the late Dr Leitner to which the family had succeeded on his death. Syed Ameer Ali and his colleagues continued to press their demand and eventually a compromise was agreed upon whereby the family handed over the Mosque and Memorial House to the control and management of the Muslim claimants and were permitted to retain the Institute and the area attached to it as their own property. About that time (1912) Khawaja Kamaluddin Sahib arrived in London and started the publication of a monthly journal which ultimately became known as The Islamic Review. When he discovered the situation in which the Mosque and Memorial House at W oking stood he approached Syed Ameer Ali and suggested that he should be put in charge of the Mosque and Memorial House so that the Mosque could be used as a place of Muslim worship and the Memorial House could be used as the residence of the Imam.