Sultan Hyder Josh had his early schooling at Anglo Arabic School Delhi, under the supervision of his mother. His mother belonged to a known family of Delhi. In 1905 he moved to Madarsatul Uloom, Aligarh for further studies. In 1912 he started his career in government service as a Naib Tehsildar. Receiving promotions on the basis of good track record he retired as Deputy Collector in 1946. He was also a founder member of the Aligarh Muslim University Court. After retirement he permanently settled in Aligarh and lived in a bungalow "Hamid Manzil" on Marris Road. He died, sixty years ago, on May 11, 1953 and was buried in the university graveyard.
In Delhi, during his school days, he was a very good football player. At Aligarh also he was an active member of the football team. He kept himself physically fit through regular exercise even after retirement. He was extremely fair in complexion and from appearance resembled an Englishman. He always kept himself well dressed, and used to wear immaculate creaseless suits. Due to his get-up in Aligarh, he became popularly known as "JOHN BULL". He had an excellent sense of humour typical of Aligarians and people of all ages enjoyed his company. He suffered from hard of hearing, in advanced age, but this handicap never hampered his amusing nature.
His son M.E. Hyder (Muhammad Ehsan Hyder) was Headmaster of Muslim University School, Aligarh before partition of India. Afterwards, he went to UK and remained associated with BBC before migrating to Pakistan. Here he served as Principal of Cantonment Public School, Karachi from 1959 to 1972. Sultan Hyder Josh had two daughters Mehmooda Anwer who served as lecturer at Girls College, Aligarh and Abida Ahmed who remained first lady of India, besides being a member of Indian Parliament, her husband Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was President of India from 1974 to 1977.
Sultan Hyder Josh wrote a novel while he was still a student, as such; he became a writer at an early age. His articles, both serious and humorous, appeared frequently in 'Makhzan' Lahore edited by Sir Abdul Qadir, 'Old Boy' published by Maulana Shaukat Ali from Aligarh and daily 'Hamdard' printed by Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar from Delhi. With Josh as Takhallus he wrote poetry as well but never took it seriously. He has also left a book on the life and times of founder of Sheikhupur Muhtashim Khan Nawab Farid who belonged to the Mughal period of Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb Alamgir. In this book he has dealt with a dry subject of history through literary excellence. On the other hand after studying a host of English writers he introduced Afsana (short story) writing to Urdu literature. He claimed that he started writing Afsana even before Munshi Dhanpat Rai Premchand as is normally considered in history of Urdu literature. I am not aware of the view of researchers and critiques on this aspect as to who was first to write short story in Urdu, but short stories written by him were regularly published by popular literary journals of that period.