BooK ReVieW- Abdullah Yusuf Ali

JAY : For our Book Review assignment, we have to study about the biography of the Muslim Personality. As for me, I choose Abdullah Yusuf Ali because he is the most famous in the English-speaking Muslim world for a major work of twentieth century Islamic scholarship-“The Holy Qur’an” Text, Translation and Commentary, published in 1934. The book that I refer to is “Searching for Solace: The Commentator of the Holy Qur’an”.



Abdullah Yusuf Ali was born on 4 April 1872 in Surat, a textile town in Gujrat, Western India. He belonged to a trade community known as the Bohras. Yusuf Ali died in 1953. His early education was at the Anjuman-e-Islam and then a missionary school named after its Scots founder, John Wilson. Yusuf Ali was one of those children who are born as adults.

Educational institutions were to be his real home from a very early age. Yusuf Ali had a brilliant academic record at Wilson School, matriculating top of his year for Bombay at the age of fourteen. He proceeded to obtain a first-class Bombay University in January 1891, possibly in Classics because he won a Latin prize and was appointed to the Dakshna Fellowship in Greek history at his old college.

Yusuf Ali was awarded a Bombay Government scholarship for further studies in England under a scheme instituted in 1868. During his adult life, Yusuf Ali twice married in England and with many British friends show the personal ties with accompanied a quest for a harmonious world order and he was a prominent supporter of a variety of organizations.

Searching for Solace is an open and sympathetic study that draws on Yusuf Ali’s vast literary production as well as unpublished sources. His public acclaim contrasted with a troubled marital life and a sense of despair. He turned to the Qur’an for peace and mind and found healing. He then wrote as a man inspired, developing his literary skills as a professional for the bright of enlightenment and spiritual upliftment he had experienced. His job as a college principal of Islamia College, Lahore and his political strong loyalty also shaped his Qur’anic scholarship and these inter-relationships are explored in the biography of the book that I have studied.