Remembering Syed Ahmad, eminent economist and Urdu dictionary compiler

Mohammed Wajihuddin October 30 is the first death anniversary of noted economist, former head and chairman of the Department of Economics at McMaster University, Canada, Prof Syed Ahmad. An alumnus of Jamia Millia, Patna University, Aligarh Muslim University and London School of Economics, Ahmad taught at universities in Aligarh, Khartoum (Sudan), Kent (England) and McMaster (Canada). He was a visiting professor at many other institutions and has left a legion of students and admirers across the globe.
Syed who passed away at the ripe age of 90 recently counted former Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh among his friends. He is profiled in “A Biographical Dictionary of Major Economists (1700-1986)” and was also among “Who is Who in Economics.” Once Syed Ahmad reached a bookshop in Muzaffarpur and inquired about some books on economics. An economics student from a local college was there too. The student began chatting with Ahmad and, once he found that the man before him in kurta-pyjama (he would mostly wear kurta-pyjama when on vacation in India) was the famous economist he had heard of so much, he knelt down to touch his feet.
Syed’s seminal treatise Capital in Economic Theory: Neo-classical, Cambridge and Chaos earned him wide acclaim. Ahmad’s nephew, son-in-law and former Union Minister Dr Shakeel Ahmad says: “Dr Manmohan Singh would often ask me about Syed Ahmad Sahab. He valued his works.” Besides being a towering scholar in economics, Ahmad was also a passionate lover of Urdu and is credited with preparing Abjadi Loghat Nigari (Numeric Alphabetical Dictionary) in Urdu. A pioneering work this dictionary in four volumes talks about the relationship of Urdu alphabets with numerics.
Before I read the Urdu book Syed Ahmad Aur Abjadi Loghat Nigari (Syed Ahmad and Numeric Alphabetical Dictionary) by Dr Syed Mohammed Hibbanul Haque, I didn’t know that this itself is a science. Those of us who grew up in households where Urdu was an indispensable part we learnt that 786 denotes ‘Bismillah hir rahman nir rahim’ ( In the name of God, merciful and beneficent). This Quranic proclamation is often written on top of the page whenever devout Muslims begin to write anything important like letters, religious documents or just even love letters. So, instead of saying it in so many words, they just put 786, reaffirming the sacred start of the document.