On Dec 23, 2020, the poet, screenwriter and film producer Mahmood Jamal passed away at London’s Royal Free Hospital. He had been receiving treatment for prostate cancer, and had been admitted for investigations after intestinal bleeding was discovered. There he was diagnosed with Covid-19, placed in intensive care and, after a few days, died.

Mahmood was the second son of Maulana Jamal Mian of Farangi Mahal (d. 2012) and the grandson of Maulana Abdul Bari (d. 1926), a leader of the Khilafat Movement. His mother was Asar, daughter of Shah Hayat Ahmed, the Sajjada Nasheen of Rudauli Sharif in Bara Banki, Awadh.

In the marriage of Jamal and Asar, two great lines of religious leadership were brought together — that of Islamic scholarship, infused by spiritual insights, of the Farangi Mahal family of Lucknow, and that of spiritual leadership in the Chishti Sabiri tradition descended from Ahmed Abdul Haq of Rudauli (d. 1434).

Mahmood spent his early years in Farangi Mahal where the household was managed by Abdul Bari’s sister, Amma. In 1951, Jamal Mian moved the whole family to Dhaka where, with the help of the Ispahani merchant family, he was developing his business in jute and tea.

Early figures in his Dhaka upbringing were Ammi Dadi, Abdul Bari’s widow, and Irtiza Husain, his father’s driver. With his siblings he was sent to Western schools, Sadri Ispahani being in charge of the school run for both families. He learned Arabic, Persian and the Holy Quran at home. He was expected to be at home five times a day for family prayers in congregation.

In Dhaka, the family continued to follow the customs of the Farangi Mahal devotional year: giyarhvin, Milad, Urs, fateha, Ramazan, and qawwali. In Dhaka, he was exposed to his father’s values and friendships; with his siblings he was encouraged to sing Naats in Bengali, and it was his father’s former political boss, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, governor of East Pakistan, who taught him how to play chess.

In 1967, Mahmood travelled to London to train as an accountant. He did so, and was to put the skills he learned to good use for the rest of his life. But his first loves were poetry and film. He developed a significant career as a poet. His poems were published in the London Magazine, broadcast on BBC radio, performed at leading poetry venues in the UK and featured in several anthologies, including New British Poetry and Grandchildren of Albion.

Collections of his poetry appeared under the following titles: Silence Inside a Gun’s Mouth (1984), Song of the Flute (1995), Sugar-Coated Pill (2007), Stars (2020) and The Dream and Other Poems (2020). He also produced several volumes of translations from Urdu into English: the Penguin Book of Modern Urdu Poetry (1980), Islamic Mystical Poetry (2009), Faiz 50 Poems (2011), and at his death he was working on ‘Iqbal 50 Poems’.

In 1984 he was the recipient of the Minority Rights Group Award for his poetry, translations and critical writings. Moreover, he carried his love of poetry, in particular Urdu poetry, into teaching. For several years he held classes on the Urdu ghazal at the Royal Asiatic Society.

For many years Mahmood worked as an independent film producer and writer. He produced several documentary series, notably a series on Islam entitled ‘Islamic Conversations’. From 1991 to 1992, he was the lead writer with Barry Simmer on ‘Family Pride’, Britain’s first Asian soap opera which examined the lives of three Asian families in Birmingham. It was shown in the midlands on ITV and in the UK on Channel 4. In the mid-1990s, he wrote and produced for Channel 4 the drama series ‘Turning World’ which explored the closing down of a mental asylum.

Twenty years later, Mahmood was working on a film in which his younger brother Ahmed Alauddin Jamal was the director and he was the producer and screenwriter. Called ‘Rahm’ or ‘Mercy’, it was a translation of the plot of Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’ into 20th century Lahore, focusing on issues of power, deceit and religious extremism. This full-length film was visually a love letter to Lahore as well as being a protest against Islamic extremism. It won critical acclaim — for instance, it won the best adapted screenplay award at the London Asian Film Festival in 2017, a pat on the back for Mahmood — but was not a commercial success.

From the mid-1970s I came to know Mahmood well. We would meet regularly, and in recent years at least once a month. The frequency of our meetings increased when I began to work on my biography of his father, Jamal Mian: the Life of Maulana Jamaluddin Abdul Wahab of Farangi Mahal 1919-2012 (Karachi: OUP, 2017). Mahmood was the keeper of his father’s papers and would slowly release to me what he thought might be useful.

Of particular value were his translations of tapes his father had made of important moments in his life and his capacity to read his father’s diary entries, which were central to producing an interesting biography. It was Mahmood’s engagement with this work which made the outcome worthwhile.

While working with me, Mahmood learned something new about himself. He had always thought he had been born in 1948, but we discovered a letter from Lucknow to his father in the Middle East announcing Mahmood’s birth in spring 1947. Together we spent many pleasant days both in London and in Karachi.

Mahmood was a sportsman. When in London he liked to join in the Sunday cricket session organised by the journalists Peter Oborne and Richard Heller. He also played tennis and was very fond of golf.

With his many talents he was a humble and kind man, deeply humane and the best of friends. He represented in secular form the Sufi values of Farangi Mahal. He was unmarried. He leaves six siblings: Bari Mian, Alauddin, Moin, Farida, Amina and Humaira.