Abdullah Yusuf Ali

Abdullah Yusuf Ali

Early life

Ali was born in Bombay,

Abdullah Yusuf Ali belonged to the group of Indian Muslims from professional families who were concerned with rank and status. In pursuit of his aspiration for influence, deference, if not outright obsequiousness, became a central feature of his relationship with the British. During the formative phase of his life he mingled mainly in upper-class circles, assiduously cultivating relations with members of the English élite. He was particularly impressed by the apparently genteel behaviour and cordiality of those with whom he associated, and, as a result, became an incorrigible Anglophile. His marriage to Teresa Shalders according to the rites of the Church of England, his hosting of receptions for the good and the great, his taste for Hellenic artefacts and culture and fascination for its heroes, his admiration for freemasonry in India as a way of bridging the racial and social divide, and his advocacy of the dissemination of rationalist and modernist thought through secular education were all genuine attempts to assimilate into British society.^[7]

His constant travelling between India and Britain took its toll on his marriage and his wife Teresa Mary Shalders was unfaithful to him and gave birth to an illegitimate child in 1910,

He married Gertrude Anne Mawbey (1895–1984) in 1920, and she having taken the Muslim name 'Masuma' returned with him to India to escape the harassment the couple suffered from Ali's children from his first marriage, who resented him and his new wife. In his will Ali specifically mentioned his second son Asghar Bloy Yusuf Ali who "has gone so far as to abuse, insult, vilify and persecute me from time to time."[8]

With Mawbey he had a son, Rashid (born 1922/3),

In December 1938 while on tour to promote his translation, Ali helped to open the Al-Rashid Mosque, the third mosque in North America, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.^[15][16] In 1947 Ali was among many Indians who returned to India after Independence to take up political posts. However, for him the move was not a success and he returned to London where he became increasingly frail in mind and body, living in isolation ignored by both his family and the British establishment he had previously associated with. Of no fixed abode, Ali spent most of the last decade of his life either living in the National Liberal Club, in the Royal Commonwealth Society or wandering about the streets of London and living in poverty despite having £20,578 16s 3d in the bank.^[12][17] On 9 December 1953 Ali was found destitute and in a bewildered condition in a doorway in Westminster by the police^[14] who took him to Westminster Hospital. He was discharged the following day and was taken in by a London County Council home for the elderly in Dovehouse Street in Chelsea. Here he suffered a heart attack on 10 December and was rushed to St Stephen's Hospital in Fulham where he died alone the same day.^[7][10]

No relatives claimed the body but Ali was known to the

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