Muhammad Yusuf Khan (born Maruthanayagam Pillai) was a commandant of the British East India Company's Madras Army. He was born in a Tamil Velir caste family in a village called Panaiyur in British India, what is now in Nainarkoil Taluk, Ramanathapuram District of Tamil Nadu, India. He converted to Islam and was named Muhammad Yusuf Khan. He was popularly known as Khan Sahib when he became a ruler of Madurai. He became a warrior in the Arcot troops, and later a commandant for the British East India Company troops. The British and the Arcot Nawab employed him to suppress the Polygar (a.k.a. Palayakkarar) uprising in South India. Later he was entrusted to administer the Madurai country when the Madurai Nayak rule ended. A dispute arose with the British and Arcot Nawab, and three of Khan's associates were bribed to capture him. He was captured during his morning prayer (Thozhugai) and hanged on 15 October 1764 at Sammatipuram near Madurai. Local legends state that he survived two earlier attempts at hanging, and that the Nawab feared Yusuf Khan would come back to life and so had his body dismembered and buried in different locations around Tamil Nadu. Early years Maruthanayagam Pillai was born in 1725 in the village of A. Panaiyoor in a Hindu family of Vellala caste, in what is now Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu, India. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield – who was in the service of Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah, the Nawab of Arcot, for three years – mentions in his Genuine Memoirs of Asiaticus that Yusuf Khan was of royal extraction and high descent. 2nd ed, 1785, page 160 The Scots Magazine (1765, page 264) tells of a letter written by a gentleman in the East Indies to a friend in Scotland, from the military camp before Palamcottah, dated 22 October 1764 (a week after his hanging), where in Yusuf Khan is said to be 'descended from the ancient seed of that nation'. According to an ancient Tamil manuscript Pandiyamandalam, Cholamandalam Poorvika Raja Charithira Olungu, the Pandiyan dynasty in Madurai was founded by one Mathuranayaga Pandiyan (Mathuranayagam). Yusuf Khan was believed to be his descendant. Being too restless in his youth, Yusuf Khan left his native village, and later lived with the company of his martial arts master and converted to Islam. He served the French Governor Jacques Law in Pondicherry. It was here he