He declared his conversion to Islam in dramatic fashion after delivering a talk on 'Islam and Progress' on 29 November 1917, to the Muslim Literary Society in Notting Hill, West London.

[2][3] The Pickthalls traced their ancestry to a knight of William the Conqueror, Sir Roger de Poictu, from whom their surname derives.

[3] Mary, of the Irish Inchiquin clan, was the widow of William Hale and the daughter of Admiral Donat Henchy O'Brien, who served in the Napoleonic Wars.

[3][4] Pickthall spent the first few years of his life in the countryside, living with several older half-siblings and a younger brother in his father's rectory in rural Suffolk.

[7] Pickthall travelled across many Eastern countries, gaining a reputation as a Middle-Eastern scholar, at a time when the institution of the Caliphate had collapsed with the Muslim world failing to find consensus on appointing a successor.

While in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, Pickthall published his English translation of the Quran with the title The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.

[11] In June 1917, Pickthall gave a speech defending the rights of Palestinian Arabs, in the context of the debate over the Balfour Declaration.