[1] He served as the head (imam) of the Shafi'i school of law at the mosque of Mecca (Masjid al-Haram).
[2] Although Ahmad Khatib was an orthodox Sunni Muslim, he still hoped to reconcile the matrilineal system in Minangkabau with the laws of inheritance prescribed in the Quran.
Khatib was born on 26 June 1860 in Koto Tuo, Ampek Angkek, Agam Division, West Sumatra in the then Dutch East Indies.
[3] Later, he moved to the Ottoman Empire to receive a nominal Islamic education under the guidance of the local jurists and settled in Mecca for the rest of his life.
In his capacity as a diplomat, he represented his homeland in Pakistan, Iraq, the United States of America, Nigeria, Turkey, Bangladesh, Nepal, and finally as Saudi ambassador to Malaysia.