Quaid-e-Azam

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born in Karachi in 1876 and trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London. He entered politics as a member of the Indian National Congress and spent his early career arguing for Hindu-Muslim unity, work that earned him the description of its best ambassador.

His later case was different and he made it in the same register: not as a preacher but as a lawyer, in constitutional argument, over years. Pakistan was founded on 14 August 1947 and he became its first Governor-General.

He held that office for just over a year. He died on 11 September 1948, having spent his last months building a state whose institutions he would not live to see settle.