This thesis seeks to contribute to discussions across varied disciplines by exploring the historical events and intellectual debates that coloured the life and work of Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall. By paying close attention to the content of Pickthall’s literature, scholarship, and journalism, this thesis offers insights into an array of topics, including controversies surrounding Muslim religious authority in colonial India, the history of Quran translation, post-colonial literary theory, and Muslim anti-colonial activism and scholarship. This work’s primary focus is Pickthall’s political activism and scholarship in India between 1920-1935, which remains a neglected feature of current academic scholarship on his life. My assessment of Pickthall’s life does not seek resolutions, rather it seeks to open further avenues of debate and enquiry, by displaying the multifaceted and complex nature of the historic epochs he inhabited and the nuances that comprised the development of his thought. Pickthall’s was an era of momentous change, as Muslims grappled with the constantly shifting socio-political, intellectual, and religious landscapes they inhabited. One of the most significant aspects of Pickthall’s story is the intricate glimpses he offers into these historical developments through his writings. His literature, journalism, and later scholarship offer varied lenses through which to view the changes occurring in the diverse historical milieus he inhabited, each of which had a deep bearing on his thought. It is this thorough and revised contextualisation of his Islamic thought and politics in India that this thesis offers to existing scholarship on his life
