[1][2] His birthname was Sadreddīn Nizāmeddin al-Maqsūdī, and while operating as a congressman in State Duma, he used the Russified version Sadrutdin Nisamutdinovich Maksudov (Садретдин Низаметдинович Максудов).

[2] In 1918, after the rise of bolshevism and the breaking up of the Islamic party he was a part of, Sadri Maksudi Arsal escaped through Saint Petersburg to Finland, where he stayed in Tampere, at the home of local Finnish Tatar named Imad Samaletdin.

From there, the next year he continued his trip to Paris, where at the Peace Conference he spoke for the political rights of people living in Idel Ural area, though he was not able to produce a positive result with his speech.

In 1925, Arsal moved to Turkey, where among other things he worked as a lecturer and later as professor of legal history and philosophy in universities of Ankara and Istanbul, and was eventually awarded with an honorary title.

[2] Sadri Maksudi Arsal published multiple literary works in the fields of his studies, for example Türk dili için, which deals with the development of Turkish language and in where he proposes different ways of which it could be made better; like removing foreign influences from it.