NOOR HASSANALI was Trinidad and Tobago’s second President after independence, its first Muslim leader and its first of Indian origin.

A retired High Court judge, he played a key role in easing the racial and religious tensions that swept the former British colony in the 1980s and 1990s, during his two successive five-year terms.

Although he was visiting London during the apparent coup attempt by radical black Muslims in July 1990, and was advised to stay away until the six-day siege was over, his return helped to calm his stunned compatriots and to get democracy and the rule of law back on track.

In a nation best known to the world for its cricket and calypso, the storming of Parliament, with the Prime Minister and Cabinet taken hostage and about 40 people killed, had put Trinidad and Tobago at the top of world news bulletins for the first time.

Racial and religious tensions had been simmering for years, indeed they still are, sometimes between Christian and Muslim Afro-Trinidadians, but more often between radical black Muslim converts and the largely Muslim population of Indian subcontinental origin.

Although the post of president is largely ceremonial, islanders of all religions and ethnic origins believe Hassanali’s tranquil demeanour, his mediation skills, his objectivity and his devout Islamic faith were key to calming disgruntled Muslims, many of them Afro-Caribbeans who had converted from Christianity, in the months and years after the coup attempt.

Noor Mohamed Hassanali was born in the coastal town of San Fernando in 1918, the sixth child of seven and a grandson of Hassanali Khan, an indentured labourer from India. At school and at Naparima College in San Fernando, he was known as a talented footballer and cricketer, playing for Spitfire, one of the leading local football sides.

After graduating in 1937 he stayed on at the college to teach French and sport until 1943, when he emigrated to Canada to further his education. He took his BA at the University of Toronto in 1947, and in 1948, he was called to the Bar as a member of Gray’s Inn. He returned to his homeland to practise law, marrying schoolteacher Zalayhar Mohammed in 1952.

He served successively as magistrate, senior magistrate, senior Crown Counsel, assistant solicitor-general, High Court judge and finally Supreme Court Justice of Appeal until he retired in 1985.

Two years later, after the election victory of the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), which proposed him as president, parliament elected him to succeed Sir Ellis Clarke, who had served first as Governor-General after independence in 1962 and later as the first president of the islands. Hassanali was sworn in on March 19, 1987.

Such was his national popularity, especially after the “coup” in 1990, that the People’s National Movement (PNM), victorious in the 1992 elections, proposed him for a further five-year term.

In a eulogy to the Red House, the nation’s Parliament, the Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, described Hassanali as “a reassuring and harmonising presence in the midst of seminal political change in Trinidad and Tobago”.

He is survived by his wife, Zalayhar, a son and a daughter,

Noor Hassanali, President of Trinidad and Tobago, 1987-97, was born on August 8, 1918. He died on August 25, 2006, aged 88.