William “Haji” Williamson was an English adventurer who lived a life full of adventure and intrigue, traversing the world. Williamson was born in Bristol in 1872, and when still a boy demonstrated a rebellious nature that sat easily with a passionate hatred of injustice. At 13 he boarded a tea clipper bound for Australia, which took him to San Diego where he ran away from his crewmates and found work on a farm South of Los Angeles.

After a brush with imprisonment in Manila at the hands of the Spanish colonial authorities and a prison escape, on the SS Siam, he found in the small ship’s library a book by Imam Abdullah Quilliam, then the Shaykh al-Islam of the British Isles.

In the British-run port of Aden, Williamson developed a growing interest in Islam, visiting the mosque and tomb of Imam Abu Bakr al-Aydarus, as well as making the acquaintance of the sayyids and other religious notables of the Arabian port. After a year of study under the courteous and patient ulema of Aden, Williamson wrote passionate letters to his father inviting him to the truth of Islam. He then travelled to the court of the Sultan of the neighbouring town of Lahj, where he made his formal shahada and henceforth, he was Abdullah Fadhil.

For two years, Abdullah studied Arabic and Islam under the ulema of Kuwait. He also spent time travelling through the flat immensities of the northern Arabian deserts, where he learned to love the camel and the Arabian horse. After performing the Hajj pilgrimage, Hajji Abdullah became a trader along the Kuwait coastline, up the mighty Shatt al-Arab (the confluence of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates) into the Iraqi hinterland. On occasion he would take prime Arab horses to Bombay, to be sold to the British cavalry. He later worked with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and in 1937 he retired to a small house in the village of Kut al-Hajjaj near Basra. Here he raised children and grandchildren, amazing them with tales of his remarkable life.