The Jinnah family was a political family of Pakistan. Jinnahs have played an important role in the Pakistan Movement for creation of Pakistan, a separate country for Muslims of India. The family held the leadership of All-India Muslim League, and its successor, Muslim League, until it dissolved in 1958 by martial law. Originally from a Gujarati background, they moved to Karachi from Kathiawar, Gujarat in the 19th century. Jinnah's paternal grandfather was from Paneli Moti village in Gondal state in Kathiawar peninsula. Jinnah was the eldest of seven children of Jinnahbhai Poonja, a prosperous merchant, and his wife, Mithibai. His family was a member of the Zoroastrian community from Iran, settled in Gujarat, and had converted to Shia Islam centuries later and became followers of the Aga Khan. Jinnah considered the IsmailI Imam - Agha Khan lll -as his spiritual mentor. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Fatima Jinnah, have been important figures in the history of Pakistan. Jinnah is considered as the founder of Pakistan and he served as the first Governor General of Pakistan upon independence, while Fatima played an important role in the struggle for Pakistan Movement and was the founding mother of Pakistan. Jinnah and Fatima have remained extremely important and well-respected figures in Pakistan, even after their deaths. Several public places, universities, and hospitals in the world have been named after Jinnah and his sister Fatima, and the former's birth and death anniversary are among the public holidays in Pakistan.
Members of the Jinnah family
The ancestors of Jinnah belonged to the influential Gujarati Parsi community of India, who later converted to Shia Islam.
Second generation
Jinnahbhai Poonja., a Khoja, was married to Mithhibai.
* m. Mithhibai
* Jinnahbhai Poonja was a prosperous Gujarati merchant. He moved to Karachi before Muhammad Ali Jinnah's birth. He and his wife had 7 children:
* Jinnah is the founder of Pakistan and was the country's first Governor-General.His first marriage in 1892 was the result of his mother urging him to marry his cousin Emibai Jinnah before he left for England to pursue higher studies. However, Emibai died a few months later. His second marriage took place in 1918 to Rattanbai Petit, a Parsi who was 24 years his junior. Rattanbai converted to Islam when she married Jinnah. In 1919, she gave birth to their only daughter, Dina Jinnah.
* m. Emibai Jinnah
** Dawn Fact File: "In his youth, Mohammad Ali Jinnah was married to a distant cousin named Emibai from Paneli village in Gujarat at his mother's urging. At the time of their marriage, Jinnah was only 16 and Emibai was 14. The marriage was arranged by his mother because she feared that when Jinnah went to England, he might end up marrying an English girl. The couple hardly lived together as Jinnah sailed from India soon after his marriage and Emibai died few weeks later."
* m. Rattanbai Jinnah
Ahmed Ali Jinnah
Bunde Ali Jinnah
Rahmat Bai Jinnah
Shireen Jinnah
Fatima Jinnah
* Fatima Jinnah was a dental surgeon, biographer, stateswoman, and one of the leading Founding mothers of modern-state of Pakistan. She also played a pivotal role in civil rights and introduced the women's rights movement in the Pakistan Movement. After her brother's death she continued to play a pivotal role in Pakistani politics and in 1965 returned to active politics by running against Ayub Khan in the 1965 elections.
* Dina was born to Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Rattainbai Jinnah in London shortly after midnight on the morning of 15 August 1919. As Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan records: "Oddly enough, precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah's other offspring, Pakistan."
She had a rift with her father when she expressed her desire to marry a Parsi-born Indian, Neville Wadia. According to M C Chagla in "Roses in December", Jinnah, a Muslim, disowned his daughter after trying to dissuade her from marrying Neville. Dina Wadia was the only direct living link to Jinnah and the nation of Pakistan claiming her father as its own father of the nation is assumed to have some kind of kinship with her according to Akbar S. Ahmed. His descendants through her are part of the Wadia family and reside in India as she married and stayed in India after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Dina Wadia lived alone with staff in the New York City, United States. Wadia died at her home in New York on 1 November 2017 at the age of 98. She was suffering from pneumonia.
