Born into a wealthy family of Kashmiri–Pashtun heritage, he completed his schooling in Peshawar and attended the prestigious Muslim Oriental College in Aligarh. A Muslim nationalist, Peshawari left his education and journeyed to Ottoman Turkey in 1912 among a group of volunteer medics from British India to aid Ottoman forces in the Balkan War. At the end of the war, he chose to stay behind in Turkey and joined the Ottoman Army, earning a distinguished military career participating in the First World War. He also briefly worked as a journalist for Anadolu Agency. In 1920, he was appointed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as Turkey's first envoy to Afghanistan.