Rowland Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley

Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley ( London , January 19, 1855 – June 22, 1935, London), also known as Shaikh Rahmatullah al-Farooq , was an Irish peer and a prominent convert to Islam , who was also one of the leading members of the Woking Muslim Mission alongside Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din . He also presided over the British Muslim Society for some time. Lord Headley was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College , Cambridge University . He then entered Middle Temple , before commencing studies at King's College London . He subsequently became a civil engineer by profession, a builder of roads in India , and an authority on the protection of intertidal zones . He was an enthusiastic practitioner of boxing as well as other arts of self defence, and in 1890 co-authored, with C. Phillips-Wolley, the classic Broad-sword and Singlestick . He was solo author of Boxing (introduced by the boxer Bat Mullins ) which was reprinted in 2006. Lord Headley embraced Islam on 16 November 1913 and adopted the Muslim name of Shaikh Rahmatullah al-Farooq. In 1914 he established the British Muslim Society. He was the author of several books on Islam, including A Western Awakening to Islam (1914) and Three Great Prophets of the World . He was a widely traveled man and twice made the Hajj . Lord Headley with Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din He inherited his peerage from his cousin in 1913. In 1921 he married the Australian author Barbara Baynton . He became bankrupt in 1922. He was offered the throne of Albania in 1925, along with $500,000 and $50,000 per year but refused it - at which point Lady Barbara Headley returned to Melbourne , where she died in 1929. From 1929 Lord Headley owned and lived at Ashton Gifford House near the village of Codford in Wiltshire .¹