Indian educator and jurist, Sir Sayyid was born in 1817 to a family of officials in the Mughal Dynasty. He worked for the British East India Co. and held various judicial posts. He supported the British in the 1857 Indian Mutiny but criticized their errors in his influential pamphlet "Causes of the Indian Revolt". His other work includes Essays on the Life of Mohammed (1870) and commentaries on the Bible and Quran.

Ahmad Khan founded schools at Muradabad and Ghazipur . He also established the Scientific Society, sought to strengthen the Muslim community through the reforms journal Tahdhib al-Akhlaq and was active in founding a Muslim college, the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College, in 1877 at Aligarh.