Mohammad Ishaq Khan

Mohammad Ishaq Khan (9 January 1946 – 5 April 2013) was a historian of Kashmir. He was Dean Academics, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Head, Department of History at Kashmir University. After his superannuation in 2005, he became the Director of the newly founded Centre for Kashmir Studies and later held the Shaikhul Alam Chair at Kashmir University until August 2008.

Ishaq Khan was the son of a prominent businessman, Ghulam Ahmad Khan, who was one of the local pioneers of hotel industry (Kashmir Guest House at Lal Chowk until 1978) in Kashmir. Being a staunch supporter of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Ahmad Khan was jailed for his underground political activities and died on 4 April 1956 after his release. In his Weekly Khalid (April 1956), Khwaja Sadruddin Mujahid, editor, and jailmate of Ghulam Ahmad Khan along with Ghulam Mohiuddin Shah, alleged that the illness and subsequent death of his friend was caused by slow poisoning in the Central Jail of Srinagar (See Ishaq,Crisis of a Kashmiri Muslim: Spiritual and Intellectual. While from his father’s family, Ishaq traces his genealogy to the Pathans of Rampur (See Ishaq Perspectives on Kashmir: Historical Dimensions, 1983, his mother belonged to the known family of Baigs who had settled around the Hariparbat Fort in Srinagar after the Mughal invasion of Kashmir in 1586. Ishaq’s wife, Mahmooda Khan, taught English at the famous Tyndale Biscoe Memorial School, Srinagar for nearly four decades. His eldest son, Mohammad Aamir Khan (B.A. International Islamic University, Malaysia; M.A. Central University, Hyderabad) works at The Tribune.

Ishaq Khan completed his PHD under the supervision of Mohibbul Hasan in 1975. He was the first PHD of Kashmir University in the Faculty of Social Sciences. He was Professor of History at Kashmir University from 1988 to 2005 after serving the same university as Lecturer (1970–1982) and Reader (1982–1988). He was nominated as Member of the Indian Council of Historical Research by the Government of India, and presided over the Punjab History Congress (Medieval Section) in 2001. He was elected to Senior Leverhulme Fellowship by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in 1992, and was also offered a fellowship by St Cross College, Oxford.

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