Abdullah Yusuf Ali Biography

Abdullah Yusuf Ali was an Indian-born British civil servant, scholar, and translator whose The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary remains, almost a century after its first publication, the most widely circulated English-language translation of the Qur'an. Born on 14 April 1872 / 5 Safar 1289 in Bombay (now Mumbai) into a Bohra Muslim family, he memorized the Qur'an in childhood and received an exceptional dual education — first in Anjuman-i-Islam school and St. Xavier's College in Bombay, then at King's College, Cambridge, where he excelled in classics and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. He entered the Indian Civil Service in 1894, the highest tier of British colonial administration in India.

Yusuf Ali devoted his retirement years entirely to his Qur'an project, moving between Lahore, England, and the United States. The translation, first published in three volumes between 1934 and 1937 by Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf in Lahore, was distinguished by its careful literary register, its extensive footnote commentary drawing on classical tafsir and on contemporary scholarship, and its accompanying poetic introductions to each surah. He also wrote essays on Islamic civilization, lectured widely in Britain and North America on the Muslim contribution to world history, and served briefly as principal of Islamia College in Lahore.

Yusuf Ali's later life was marked by personal tragedy and increasing isolation: his marriages had ended in painful estrangement, his relationship with his children fractured, and he spent his final years alone in London. He collapsed on a London street in December 1953 / Rabi' al-Awwal 1373 and died shortly after in St. Stephen's Hospital, with no family present; he was buried at the Muslim plot of Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. His translation, despite later revisions and competing English renderings, has continued to be reprinted, distributed, and studied worldwide — a singular achievement that has shaped the encounter of millions of English-speaking readers with the Qur'an.