A Brief History of the Tyabji Family
With excerpts from Memoires of an Egoist by Badr-Ud-Din Tyabji, Roli Books Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, a newspaper clipping by Ambassador AAA Fyzee (The Sunday Standard, 17/11/1963) and data from https://www.geni.com
The Tyabjis’ forbears belonged to a small dissident sect of the Muslim Ismaili community, naming themselves Sulaimanis. Unlike the Dawoodi Bohras, they had chosen to follow the leadership and teachings of the then Dai (head) of the community who was in Yemen, and not of the rival claimant, who had settled in India. Increasingly they had become a closely-knit, distinctive community, not only by reason of their doctrinal affinities, but through intermarriage and their reformist attitude to current social and educational problems.
With the hazards that sailing ships had to face in those days from the elements as well as pirates, scenes like those depicted in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice were common enough. Quite possibly the earliest recorded ancestor Haji (Yousuf?) Bhai bin Haji Peshi Bhai (1628 -?) could have experienced a troubled ocean crossing. Six generations later, Tyab Ali Bhai Meeah, my great great grandfather, was reduced from affluence to penury by a disastrous fire which took place in Bombay. In the latter part of the eighteen’th century Cambay (originally called Khambhat, in Gujarat) had started to decline. The British had appeared and established factories in Surat. Cambay was plundered more than once by the Marathas and, to crown it all, its harbor began to silt up. At about the same time Bombay was growing in fame and prosperity. Trade and enterprise with Europe was fast enriching it. Merchants who saw the writing on the wall began to migrate from Cambay to Surat and Bombay. Bhai Meeah was one of those who made Bombay their new home.
Bhai Meeah established himself in the Fort area of the town where he acquired a valuable property and seemed set on a most prosperous course. But on 9 February 1803, a great fire famous in the history of Bombay burnt down the whole locality. This included all that Bhai Meeah and his father Haji Bhai had accumulated - his house, the English and Chinese goods in which he dealt - everything was lost. The fire began when a beautifully decorated shamiana (pavilion) constructed of bamboo and cloth, brilliantly lit with hundreds of tapers in open crystal tumblers, caught fire. Bhai Meeah and his wife Hurmat Vali, to whom the festivities had been a pleasant diversion, saw them turn in a twinkling of an eye into a flame-emitting monster, devouring all that they possessed. It was a traumatic experience. He was 50 years old and she was expecting a long-yearned-for child. So utterly impoverished were they that for shelter they had to turn back to Cambay with practically nothing except the clothes on their back. Their first child, Tyab Ali, destined to be the founder of the Tyabji family, was born seven months later, on 20 September 1803, when they were still not recovered from the calamity that had befallen them. On one occasion Bhai Meeah could not help saying that the child’s birth was a burden and a misfortune. Tyab Ali’s grandfather, Haji Bhai, hearing this cried out in anger, “Astaghfirullahi (God forgive us)! What foolish thing sayest thou! Bhai Meeah, speak not so again. I tell thee, this boy will bring glory to us, maintain thee in thy old age, and be carried in golden palanquins!”, a prophesy which like many others of Haji Bhai, proved to be true.
In the years that followed, Bhai Meeah went to Baroda and started a business there. Haji Bhai stayed on in Cambay and brought up Tyab Ali with much affection and care, but he was extremely poor. He died when his grandson was eight years old, the sole surviving male member in his grandfather’s house. Tyab Ali started life in earnest then, taking the yarn spun by his mother for sale to the market. So quick-witted did he prove that soon other women and friends in the locality began to entrust him with such commissions. Later, Bhai Meeah returned to Bombay and Tyab Ali went to live with him. There, by selling pencils, slates, and other miscellaneous articles, he earned enough to pay for his own schooling. He learnt to read the Quran, Gujerati and arithmetic. His father died a few years later.
Tyab Ali, having started life as a hawker, went on to become a shopkeeper and a commission agent. He became well known for his integrity, character and ability. A Parsi merchant, Wadi, who was much impressed by the young man, one day noticed that Tyab Ali looked unusually agitated. “What is the matter?” he asked. Tyab Ali explained that a shop, where there had been a fire, was being sold for Rs. 5,000 when it was worth Rs. 10,000. He wished he had the money, for then he would have bought it. “Well, you can have the money, and the profits will be half and half” was the generous reply. The bargain was faithfully carried out and was the first big step forward in Tyab Ali’s career. He made an equally great impression on another patron, a rich and highly respected member of his own community, who had only one child, a beautiful daughter. Tyab Ali admired her and mustered the courage to apply for her hand in marriage. There were many rival suitors, but the father brushed them aside, saying “Do you think I shall sell my daughter for money? I want worth!” Thus, Tyab Ali was married to Ameena, the daughter of Mullah Meher Ali.
Thereafter, his roots spread, and he acquired both property and wealth while his high reputation for probity allied with ability became a byword in Bombay. The honorific ji was added to his name and, as happens in India, Tyabji became the family name. Tyab Ali was a devout Muslim, well read in classical Arabic and Persian literature, as well as theology. Besides this he also learnt Hindustani, Gujerati and English. He became a Mullah, a religious as well as social leader of his community. When he died on 14 November 1863, aged sixty, it is recorded there were two successive shipments of Rs. 11 lakhs (1.1 million) each, and when the mails arrived, they created quite a hubbub in the office as piles of rials (gold coins) came in. The overland summary of the Times of India, published in England, said that he had “given a new and lasting impulse to the Indian trade with France”, and that “he has made a name for himself which will live.”
Apart from such material success, Tyab Ali had the foresight and imagination to send all his sons abroad for education, to give his daughters not only a thorough grounding in their religion, but sound and practical knowledge of Hindustani, Persian, Gujerati and domestic science. This was unheard of at the time and was obnoxious to the traditions and sentiments of the society in which he had been nurtured. Through the sheer force of his personality, intelligence, vision and character, he was able to override all the social impediments that confronted him. He triumphed in founding a family that, endowed by him with economic self-sufficiency, imbued with his ideals of work, conduct and self-reliance, and inheriting some of his inborn traits of mind and physique, continued to make a mark on Indian national life for over a century and a half. Tyab Ali’s grandchildren, bearing their own distinctive surnames, such as the Mohammadis, Hydaris, Abdulalis, Futehallys, Fyzees and of course, the Tyabjis, have played an honourable role in a wide variety of fields.
Tyab Ali was the great great great great great grandson of the first recorded family ancestor, Haji (Yusuf?) Bhai bin Haji Pesi Bhai. He married Ameena Tyab Ali and had nine children, among them my great grandfather Badruddin Tyabji (1844 - 1906). Badruddin read law in England and rose to become the first Indian chief justice of Bombay Presidency, and President of the Indian National Congress. He married Rahat-un-Nafs, had 17 living children, and their home was what is now Sophia College for Women.
His son Mohsin Tyabji, my grandfather, studied law at Balliol College, Oxford and was the first Indian to pass the English Indian Civil Service examinations. Upon his return to Bombay in 1887, at the age of 21, he took up the post of Assistant Collector and later rose to become Judge of the State Court of Surat and District and Session Judge in Bombay. In May of 1917, at 55 years of age, Grandfather met his death in a tragic drowning accident in Kihim where the Tyabji family would gather in May and June to mingle, play games, hike, swim and gorge on the Alphonso mangoes grown on their beachside properties. My grandfather died while attempting to save two children who had been swept out to sea in the approaching monsoon tides. He managed to save one of them but was knocked unconscious on a rock and drowned. My father Amin, who was 14 at the time, was severely traumatized and rarely returned to Kihim.
For those who are interested in further researching the family, a complete family tree can be found at www.geni.com. Wikipedia has quite a lot to say about the Suleimanis, Justice Badruddin Tyabji and the Tyabjis.
Here's an interesting aside. While I was working in Yemen (1989-1994), a senior government official I was traveling with asserted that the Tyabji clan must have originated in a village called Beyt-al-Tyab (Home of Tyab), near Bir Ali in coastal south-eastern Yemen. He offered to accompany me to Beyt-al-Tyab to lay claim to 'land that is rightfully yours'. As it happened, that visit never materialized because of the civil war that erupted in 1994 and spelt the end of our stay in Yemen.
