Hafiz Abdullah Yusuf Ali, CBE

CBE

CBE and C.B.E. are abbreviations for "Commander of the Order of the British Empire", a grade in the Order of the British Empire.Other uses include:* Chemical and Biochemical Engineering...

, FRSL (14 April 1872 – 10 December 1953) was an Indian

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 Islamic scholar

Ulema

Ulama , also spelt ulema, refers to the educated class of Muslim legal scholars engaged in the several fields of Islamic studies. They are best known as the arbiters of shari‘a law...

 who translated the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

 into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. His translation of the Qur'an

The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary

The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary is an English translation of the Qur'an by Indian Muslim civil servant Abdullah Yusuf Ali . It was undertaken after Yusuf Ali had retired from the Civil Service and settled in the United Kingdom in the 1920s...

 is one of the most widely-known and used in the English-speaking world.

Ali was born in Surat

Surat

Surat , also known as Suryapur, is the commercial capital city of the Indian state of Gujarat. Surat is India's Eighth most populous city and Ninth-most populous urban agglomeration. It is also administrative capital of Surat district and one of the fastest growing cities in India. The city proper...

, Gujarat in British India to a wealthy merchant family with a Dawoodi Bohra

Dawoodi Bohra

Dawoodi Bohra is a subsect of Ismāʿīlī Shīʿa Islām. While the Dawoodi Bohra is based in India, their belief system originates in Yemen, where it evolved from the Fatimid Caliphate and where they were persecuted due to their differences from mainstream Sunni Islam...

 father. As a child, Ali received a religious education and, eventually, could recite the entire Qur'an from memory.