Qazi Mohammad Adeel Abbasi was born in a devout Muslim family in eastern Uttar Pradesh and brought up in a scholarly tradition. Possessing a literary bent of mind, he aspired to become a journalist and a writer. In 1921, at a very young age, he became the Chief Editor of the daily Zamindar, Lahore’s leading nationalist Urdu paper. He soon plunged into nationalist politics, was imprisoned by the British, and never looked back. He had an eventful legislative career in the UP Assembly during 1936-56. He wrote on a variety of subjects in an inimitable style and almost always without the help of recorded notes. He has written in Urdu a study of poet Iqbal, whom he knew intimately during his days in Lahore. This work was hailed by literary critics as a landmark treatment of the topic. He also wrote a history of the Khilafat Movement in the Urdu book Tahreek-e-Khilafat, of which this book is an English translation.

Arif Ansari was born in Lucknow and grew up in Aligarh, India where he attended Our Lady of Fatima Secondary School. He was educated in Electrical Engineering at AMU, Aligarh, India and SIU, Carbondale, IL. A wireless communication engineer by training and profession, he lives near Washington DC.