Ahmad Mohamed Ibrahim

Tan Sri Datuk Prof. Ahmad Mohamed Ibrahim
Attorney-General of Singapore
In office 9 Aug 1965 – 31 Jan 1967
Preceded by	Himself (as State Advocate General of Singapore)
Succeeded by	Tan Boon Teik
State Advocate-General of the State of Singapore
In office 25 June 1959 – 8 August 1965
Preceded by	E. P. Shanks (as Attorney-General of the Crown Colony of Singapore)
Succeeded by	Post abolished and replaced with Attorney-General of Singapore
Personal details
Born	(1916-05-15)15 May 1916 Singapore (Straits Settlements)
Died	Gombak, Malaysia
Nationality	Singaporean
Spouse(s)	Puan Sri Salmah Mohamed Tahir
Relations	Cal Bellini
Residence	Gombak, Malaysia
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Religion	Islam

This is a Malay name; the name Ibrahim is a patronymic, not a family name, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Ahmad.

Tan Sri Datuk Prof. Ahmad Mohamed Ibrahim (15 May 1916 – 17 April 1999) was a Singaporean lawyer and law professor. He was the first Attorney-General of Singapore.

Early life

Ahmad was educated in Victoria Bridge School (now Victoria School), Raffles Institution, and Raffles College (now the National University of Singapore). In 1936, he received the Queen's Scholarship (now known as the President's Scholarship) to study in St John's College, University of Cambridge. He graduated in 1939 with 1st Class Economics Tripos I and 1st Class Law Tripos II, then attained the Masters in Law in 1965. He was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) from the University of Singapore on 5 June 1965.

Career

In 1948, Ahmad stood as an independent candidate in the Municipal Commission Election in Singapore and won. He became Singapore's first State Advocate General in 1959, and the nation's first non-British Attorney-General in 1966. He moved to Malaysia in 1969. In 1972, he became the dean of the law faculty of the University of Malaya. There he established the first law faculty in Malaysia. He was also later made Professor of Malaysian Law, and in 1984 University of Malaya honoured Ahmad with the highest academic title it could confer - Professor Emeritus. In 1984, Ahmad was instrumental in setting up the Kulliyyah of Laws at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), and was made the Shaikh and the Dean of the Kulliyyah. In 2000, the Kulliyyah was proclaimed as Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah in honour of Ahmad as the founding father of the Kulliyyah.

Ahmad was a key person in the merger talks between Singapore and Malaysia in the early 1960s. He was also the legal expert in the Singapore delegation to the Malaysia Talks in London in 1963, which discussed independence from Britain.

Former Singaporean deputy prime minister Goh Keng Swee once described Ahmad as a man of "tremendous breadth and depth of intellect, whose ability as a legal draftsman is unsurpassed in this country".

Ahmad was also the brother of the actor Cal Bellini (real name Khalid Ibrahim).

References

• http://www.agc.gov.sg/aboutus/history.htm