Jakub Szynkiewicz was born to a
Tatar family on 16 April 1884 in
Lyakhavichy (Lachowicze) in the
Minsk Governorate of the
Russian Empire (from 1921 to 1939 part of
Poland, today western
Belarus). He was son of Sulejman and Fatma. He had a brother, Mustafa Szynkiewicz, a Chairman of Związek Tatarów Litewskich (en. Society of Lithuanian Tatars), and sister Amina. In 1904 he graduated from the Minsk
High School (Męska Szkoła Realna), after which he first studied engineering sciences, but later in 1907 he decided to study Orientalism in
St. Petersburg. In 1925 he earned a doctorate in philosophy at the
University of Berlin with a dissertation in German language. On 28 October that year he was elected Mufti of all Muslims in
Poland. Its headquarters was located in
Vilnius. He translated a number of verses from the
Quran from
Arabic into
Polish, published in 1935 under the title
Wersety z Koranu. During his leadership he created contacts with much of the outside
Muslim World with India,
Palestine,
Egypt and others.
Mufti Szynkiewicz also attended the
Cairo caliphate congress in 1926. During the
European Muslim Congress in 1935, he was called "one of the most articulate participants". In a dramatic episode at the congress, Mufti Szynkiewicz demanded that the director of the Istituto Superiore Orientale di Napoli,
Count Bernardo Barbiellini Amidei, pronounce the profession of faith (
shahada) three times before congress participants when the count appeared before the congress to ask that it formally recognize his adherence to
Islam. Mufti Szynkiewicz also oversaw the formal regulation of the newly independent Polish state dealing with the legal status of
Polish Muslims in 1936. He was central in the plans to build a
mosque in
Warsaw that was interrupted by the
Nazi invasion of
Poland in 1939. ==World War II and exile==