Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner was born in 1840 in Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family. He was brought up as a Protestant Christian and was a gifted linguist, able to speak 15 languages by the time he left school.
After working as an interpreter for the British army during the Crimean war, Dr Leitner travelled to England aged 17 to study at King's. His passion for Islamic and Hindu culture meant that, aged just 21, he became Professor of Arabic with Mohammedan Law at King's.
Following his time in London, he went on to become Principal of the Government College at Lahore, an expert on Kashmir and, in 1883, founder of the Oriental Institute in Woking – a centre for the study of the culture and history of India and the Islamic world. It was there he commissioned the Shah Jahan Mosque.
Leitner was a tireless advocate of the fair treatment of Islam by the West, producing a pamphlet entitled Muhammadanism in 1889 producing a pamphlet, explaining Islam and refuting attacks against it.
He passed away in Bonn in 1899, and was buried in Woking, near the mosque he founded.