Mohammad Mahmud Ghali Biography

Dr. Muhammad Mahmoud Ghali was an Egyptian linguist, Qur'anic scholar, and translator best known for his English translation of the Qur'an, Towards Understanding the Ever-Glorious Qur'an, the product of two decades of work. Born in 1338 AH / 1920 CE in Egypt, he received his early Islamic education in Cairo before pursuing advanced study in linguistics in the West — completing graduate work in phonetics at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and earning his PhD in Phonetics from the University of Michigan.

Returning to Egypt, Ghali became Professor of Linguistics and Islamic Studies at Al-Azhar University and was the founding head of the Faculty of Languages and Translation, an institution that has trained a substantial proportion of Egypt's Arabic-English Islamic translators. His Qur'an translation is distinguished by its sustained attention to the lexical nuances of the Arabic original — particularly to near-synonyms (mutaradifat) that other translators often rendered as identical English words. He developed this methodology at length in his Arabic monograph Synonyms in the Ever-Glorious Qur'an. His other English works include Prophet Muhammad and the First Muslim State, Moral Freedom in Islam, and Islam and Universal Peace.

Ghali served on numerous Islamic linguistic and translation committees and was active in coordinating Qur'an translation projects across multiple languages. He died on 29 November 2016 / 1438 AH. His translation continues to be consulted by scholars and students for its careful attention to Qur'anic vocabulary and is regarded as one of the more linguistically rigorous twentieth-century renditions.