Abdullah Yusuf Ali (14 April 1872 – 10 December 1953) was an Indian Islamic scholar who translated the Qur’an into English. His translation is one of the most widely known and used in the English-speaking world.
Abdullah Yusuf Ali was born in Surat, Gujarat in British India to a wealthy merchant family with a Dawoodi Bohra father. As a child, he received a religious education and, eventually, could recite the entire Qur’an from memory. He spoke both Arabic and English fluently and studied at several European universities, including the University of Leeds. He concentrated his efforts on the Qur’an and studied the Qur’anic commentaries beginning with those written in the early days of Islamic history.
His best-known work is The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary, begun in 1934 and published in 1938 by Sh. Muhammad Ashraf Publishers in Lahore, India (later Pakistan). While on tour to promote his translation, he helped to open the Al-Rashid Mosque, the third mosque in North America, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in December 1938.
Ali was an outspoken supporter of the Indian contribution to the Allied effort in World War I. He was a respected intellectual in India and Sir Muhammad Iqbal recruited him to be the principal of Islamia College in Lahore. Later in life, he went again to England, where he died in London in December 1953. He is buried in the Muslim cemetery at Brookwood in Woking, Surrey.
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