Biography

Abdullah Yusuf Ali was a highly accomplished individual born in India on April 4, 1872. He was a barrister by profession and had received his education from India and England, obtaining degrees in MA and LL.M. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).

Throughout his life, Abdullah Yusuf Ali was a devout Muslim and a prolific writer who authored several books on Islam. He was mainly known for his work on interpreting and explaining the Qur’an, known as Tafsir.

During World War I, Abdullah Yusuf Ali was a staunch supporter of the British war effort and actively participated in various campaigns to raise funds for the war. As a result of his contributions, he was awarded the prestigious honour of CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1917.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali died in London, England, on December 10, 1953. His contributions to the study of Islam, mainly through his work on the Qur’an, have made him a revered figure among Muslims worldwide.

Early Life

In 1893, a young man named Ali attended Wilson College in Bombay, which was documented in a photograph. Ali’s father, Yusuf Ali Allahbuksh, was originally a member of the Shi’i Isma’ili community in the Dawoodi Bohra tradition in Bombay. He later became a Sunni and worked as a Government Inspector of Police, earning the title Khan Bahadur for his public service. Ali attended Anjuman Himayat-ul-Islam school as a child and later studied at Wilson College, where he received a religious education and became proficient in Arabic and English. He focused his studies on the Qur’an, delving into the commentaries written throughout Islamic history.

Ali earned a first-class Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at the University of Bombay when he was 19 in 1891. He was awarded a Presidency of Bombay Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in England. In 1891, he travelled to Britain to study law at St John’s College, Cambridge. He graduated with a BA and LL.B. in 1895 and returned to India with a post in the Indian Civil Service (ICS). In 1896, he was called to the Bar in Lincoln’s Inn in absentia. He received his MA and LL.M. in 1901.

In 1900, Ali married Teresa Mary Shalders at St Peter’s Church in Bournemouth. They had three sons and a daughter, and while Ali returned to his post in India, his wife and children settled in various places in England. Ali returned to Britain in 1905 on a two-year leave from the ICS and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Literature during this period.

Ali first gained public attention in Britain after lecturing at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1906, organized by his mentor Sir George Birdwood. Another mentor, Lord James Meston, formerly Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces, appointed Ali to various positions in different districts in India, including two short periods as acting Under Secretary in 1907 and then Deputy Secretary from 1911 to 1912 in the Finance Department of the Government of India.

Family and Career

According to his biographer Khizar Humayun Ansari in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Abdullah Yusuf Ali was a member of a group of Indian Muslims from professional backgrounds who placed a high value on rank and status. In pursuit of his desire for influence, Ali developed a habit of showing deference, if not obsequiousness, in his interactions with the British. During his early years, he spent much of his time among the upper class, working hard to build relationships with members of the English elite. He was particularly taken with their polite behaviour and warm attitudes, leading him to become an avid Anglophile.

To assimilate into British society, Ali pursued several activities, such as marrying Teresa Shalders in a Church of England ceremony, hosting receptions for prominent people, embracing Hellenic artefacts and culture, admiring freemasonry as a way of bridging racial and social divides, and advocating the dissemination of rationalist and modernist ideas through secular education. All of these endeavours were genuine attempts on his part to fit in with British culture.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s frequent travels between India and Britain had a negative impact on his marriage to Teresa Mary Shalders. In 1910, his wife had an affair and gave birth to an illegitimate child, leading to their divorce in 1912. Ali gained custody of their four children, but they later rejected him, and during his visits to London in the 1920s and 1930s, he stayed at the National Liberal Club.

In 1914, Ali resigned from the Indian Civil Service and settled in Britain, where he became a Trustee of the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking and a Trustee of the fund to build the East London Mosque in 1921. When World War I broke out, many Muslims in Britain felt uneasy about supporting the British war effort against fellow Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. However, Ali was enthusiastic about the Indian contribution to the war effort and actively promoted it through his writing, speeches, and lecture tour of Scandinavia. In recognition of his services to the cause, he was appointed a CBE in 1917.

In the same year, he joined the staff of the School of Oriental Studies as a lecturer in Hindustani.

In 1920, Yusuf Ali married Gertrude Anne Mawbey, who later changed her name to ‘Masuma’ after converting to Islam. They both went to India to escape the mistreatment they faced from Ali’s children from his previous marriage, who were unhappy with their father’s new marriage. In his will, Ali specifically mentioned his second son Asghar Bloy Yusuf Ali, who had subjected him to verbal abuse, insults, and persecution on several occasions.

He was married to someone and had a son named Rashid, who was born around 1922 or 1923. However, this marriage also failed. Despite this personal setback, Mawbey was highly regarded as an intellectual in India. Sir Muhammad Iqbal recruited him to become the Principal of Islamia College in Lahore, where he served two terms, from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1935 to 1937. He also held other prominent positions in academia, such as Fellow and syndic of the University of Punjab, from 1925 to 1928 and 1935 to 1939, respectively, and was a member of the Punjab University Enquiry Committee from 1932 to 1933.

He was the author of several books, including Muslim Educational Ideals (1923) and Fundamentals of Islam (1929), Moral Education: Aims and Methods (1930), Personality of Man in Islam (1931), and The Message of Islam (1940). However, his most notable scholarly contribution was his English translation and commentary of the Qur’an, titled the Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary. This work was published in instalments between 1934 and 1938, with a revised edition published in 1939-1940. His translation and commentary on the Qur’an remain one of the two most widely used English versions, the other being the translation by Marmaduke Pickthall.

In addition to his academic accomplishments, He was also involved in politics. He was part of the Indian delegation to the League of Nations Assembly in 1928. Despite his successes in academia and politics, He faced personal struggles in his marriages, which ultimately failed.

Later Years

Abdullah Yusuf Ali, best known for his translation of the Quran, was involved in opening the Al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in December 1938 while promoting his translation. In 1947, after India gained independence, Ali returned to India and took up political posts. However, this move did not go well for him, and he eventually returned to London, where he became mentally and physically frail. Despite having significant money in the bank (£20,578 16s 3d), he lived in poverty and was ignored by his family and the British establishment he had once been associated with. Ali had no permanent residence and spent most of his last decade in the National Liberal Club, the Royal Commonwealth Society, or wandering the streets of London.

On 9 December 1953, Ali was found in a bewildered state and impoverished by the police in a doorway in Westminster, London. He was taken to Westminster Hospital but was discharged the next day. He was then taken in by a London County Council home for the elderly in Dovehouse Street in Chelsea, where he suffered a heart attack on 10 December and was rushed to St Stephen’s Hospital in Fulham. He died alone the same day.

Ali had no relatives to claim his body, so the Pakistan High Commission arranged his funeral. He was buried in the Muslim section of Brookwood Cemetery, which is located near Woking. Despite his significant contributions to the translation of the Quran, Ali died in poverty and isolation, with no one to claim his body or recognize his achievements.

Ali’s Quran Translations

Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Quran has been printed in 30 different versions. However, in Saudi Arabia, the state-sponsored Presidency of Islamic Researches has modified the original translation. The Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project, which focuses on the Twelver Shi’ah Islamic school of thought, has analyzed various printings of Ali’s translations to check whether they have retained Ali’s original interpretations of the Arabic text. The project has found that there have been some alterations to Ali’s translation.

Quran Translations

Noble Quran English Translation and Transliteration (Roman Script) by Abdullah Yousuf (R.A.)

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