Adbullah Yusuf Ali is best known as translator of the Qur'an. He first went to Britain in 1891 to study law at St John's College, Cambridge. He returned to India in 1895 having graduated from Cambridge, with an Indian Civil Service (ICS) post and was called to the Bar in Lincoln's Inn in 1896 in abstentia.

In 1900, Yusuf Ali married Theresa Mary Shalders in England. He returned to England in 1905 on a two-year leave. During this time he gave a number of lectures and was elected to the Royal Society of Arts and Royal Society of Literature.

In 1914, Yusuf Ali resigned from the ICS and settled in Britain. He had divorced his wife in 1912 and gained custody of their four children. He married Gertrude Anne Mawbey in 1920. He became involved in the Woking Mission and the East London Mosque. Seen as an imperial loyalist, Yusuf Ali had been vocally supportive of the Indian contribution to the war effort, and he was awarded a CBE in 1917. In the same year he joined the School of Oriental Studies as a lecturer in Hindustani.

Yusuf Ali wrote for a number of periodicals on political, artistic, literary and religious matters. He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and was in London at the time of the Round Table Conferences. He often wrote and spoke about Mohammad Iqbal, although they had differing political ideologies. In 1938, Yusuf Ali's translation of the Qur'an was published in Lahore while he was teaching at Islamia College. He died in 1953 in London.