Background
While still very young, he lost his father and was brought up by his elder brother Umed Ali Akhund.
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Hassan Effendi
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Career
Other notable graduates of the school include Shahnawaz Bhutto, Abdullah Haroon, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah and Allama I.I. Kazi. Effendi belonged to a respectable family of Akhunds from Hyderabad, Sindh. He had Turkish ancestry.
As according to the tradition of the Akhund family, he was enrolled in a local madrassa to read and study the Qur"an and learn the basics of the Persian language.
Upon the completion of this traditional education, Ali found work as a clerk in the office of the Deputy Collector of Naushahro. Nevertheless, he devoted all his leisure hours to the pursuit of learning English and soon acquired reasonable proficiency in reading, writing and speaking the language.
Later, Effendi started to work for the Indus flotilla, a shipping company. In the mid-1860s, while he still worked for the company, a British judge from Karachi by the name of Middleton, happened to cross the Indus river by ferry, spending the night on the ferry boat in order to cross the following morning.
Middleton found Hassan Ali Effendi reading an English book by the dim light of an oil lamp.
Hassan Ali Effendi accepted the offer and moved to Karachi to assume his new responsibilities. Impressed by his performance, Judge Middleton allowed him to practice law before the court without passing any formal degree in law. This was the turning point in Hassan Ali Effendi"s life.
Soon he was appointed as the Public Prosecutor, the first non-European in Sindh to be in charge of that post, which he would retain for 14 years.
His family includes Wajid Shamsul Hasan High Commissioner of Pakistan to the United Kingdom and the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, is Effendi"s great grandson through his mother"s family. Wishing to replicate his efforts, Effendi even travelled to Aligarh (present-day India) where he sought guidance from Syed.
lieutenant was here that he also happened to meet the British principal of the college, Theodore Beck.
