Rahim was born into a highly educated family of
Bengal, the son of
Mawlawi Abdur Rab, who was a
Zamindar in the province's
Midnapore district. Educated at
Presidency College,
Calcutta, and in England at the
Inns of Court, he became a
barrister of the Calcutta High Court in 1890, and later became a founding and influential member of the
Muslim League. Beyond his profession, Rahim was active in the world of education and became a member of the Senate and the Syndicate of the
University of Madras. He was one of those who successfully promoted the foundation of the
Maulana Azad College. On 20 July 1908, Rahim was appointed a Judge of the
High Court of Judicature at Madras, and in September 1912 (with
Lord Islington,
Lord Ronaldshay,
Herbert Fisher, and others) as a member of the
Royal Commission on the Public Services in India of 1912–1915. Rahim went on to become
Chief Justice of the High Court of Madras In the
1919 Birthday Honours, he was
knighted. While he was still a judge of the High Court of Madras, Rahim gave a series of lectures at the University of Calcutta which were later published under the title ''The Principles of Muhammadan Jurisprudence according to the
Hanafi,
Maliki,
Shafi'i, and
Hanbali Schools''. This work considers some recent European books on philosophy and law and compares the Islamic and European principles of
jurisprudence, combining classical and modern learning. Entering politics, he became a member of the
Bengal Province Executive Council and served as the province's Administrator of Justice and Allied Subjects from 1921 to 1925. In the
1925 Birthday Honours, Rahim was appointed a
Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI). In December 1925 and January 1926, Rahim chaired the 17th session of the
All-India Muslim League at
Aligarh, when he said – In 1926, he presided over the All-India Mohammadan Educational Conference and argued for the use of the
Urdu language among all Indian Muslims. The Hindu leaders became hostile to Rahim, and when in 1927 the
Governor of Bengal offered him a place in the Provincial government, the Hindus refused to work with him.
The Modern Review commented: For any Muslim, and particularly for Sir Abdur Rahim, to form such a party cannot surprise anybody. But what is amusing is that he has felt it necessary to camouflage it as something other than what it is. For the party speaks in the opening paragraph of its manifesto in the most liberal and nonsectarian tones. In 1931, he was elected to the
Central Legislative Assembly of India, and while
Mohammad Ali Jinnah was overseas for the
Round Table Conferences, Rahim led the Independent Party. On 24 January 1935, he was elected as the assembly's president, which effectively ended his public involvement in partisan politics, but he retained strong views on the interests of Muslim Indians. In June 1939, the Viceroy,
Lord Linlithgow, wrote to the
Secretary of State for India,
Lord Zetland, after sounding out Rahim on Muslim attitudes towards the proposed Federation of India – In October 1939, with Sir Abdullah Haroon, Rahim visited
Allama Mashriqi, leader of the
Khaksars, shortly after his release from jail. In 1946, Rahim donated his collection of 333
Arabic books, mostly on religion, to the
Imperial Library (now the
National Library of India), where they are known as the Sir Abdur Rahim Collection. After moving to Pakistan in 1947, he settled in
Karachi, where he eventually suffered from
pneumonia and died in 1952. His daughter Begum Niaz Fatima married the
barrister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (1892–1963), who later became the fifth
Prime Minister of Pakistan, while his son
Jalaludin Abdur Rahim was a
Nietzschean philosopher and one of the founders of the
Pakistan People's Party. ==Publications==