Ali, Dr. Hashim Amir (Urdu: هاشم أمير على), was born in 1903, son of Ahmed Ali Khan [?], a native of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, capital of what was the premier princely state in the center of India. He was brought up in the palace of Salar Jung. He received his early education in his native land at Madrasa-i-Aliya which was affiliated with Hyderabad School (Noble School) to form Nizam College and had a degree from University of Bombay, followed by study at the University of Chicago in Education and Sociology at graduate level (1927–28) and mainly at Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in Rural Sociology (1929), his thesis being: "Social change in the Hyderabad state in India as affected by the influence of Western culture."
In 1938 Dr. Ali came under the influence of Mirza Abul Fazl, who aroused his interest in and reverence for the Qur'an. He was a scholar of wide erudition and clear vision, and was gifted with special insight into the Qur'an. He devoted his life-force for more than thirty years and translated the Qur'an into poetic English to recapture its beauty and rhythm. He was aware of the significance of the chronological order of the Qur'anic revelation and arranged it according to chronological order which came out in 1974 under the title of 'The Message of the Qur'an : Presented in Perspective'. He succeeded in this effort to a considerable extent.
Dr. Ali was an educator and an active advocate of calendar reform for about ten years. He was a leading Muslem authority on calendar matters. He initiated in Hyderabad a movement to synchronize the dates of the Fasli months with the Gregorian calendar, and finally succeeded, in 1946, in persuading the Nizam to authorize the proposed reform. His success in this far-reaching revision emboldened him, as a liberal Muslem, to analyze the problem of introducing effectively The World Calendar in the realm of the Crescent. He returned to America in 1953 under a fellowship from the Fulbright and Ford Foundation.
Dr. Ali led a varied and distinguished career in academia and government, including three years of association with Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. He was Director at Rural Institute, Jamia Millia Islamia (1960–65). He was Private Secretary to the Chief minister of Hyderabad, Rt. Hon'ble Sir Akbar Hydari, and he served as Trustee of some of H.E.H. the Nizam's Private and Religious Trusts (1967) established by the last hereditary ruler of Hyderabad. He was dean of agriculture at Osmania University, Hyderabad, Deccan, India.
Dr. Ali was a versatile writer with scientist's bent of mind and poet's intuition. He wrote profusely on sociological and Islamic subjects. Throughout his life he challenged many long-held false beliefs either concocted by medieval orthodoxy or someway crept into the body Islamic Faith. He worked hard in quest of truth to eliminate many wrong ideas.
His wife, a learned and pious woman of nobility, shared his notion and gave him all along moral support while passing through thick and thin.
Dr. Ali died in 1987 at Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. He is survived by one daughter, Naveed Jehan Reza, and two sons, Hyder Amir-Ali (BORN: June 6, 1935 DIED: May 30, 2010 LOCATION: Granada Hills, CA ) and Asad Amir-Ali.
Between 1926 and 1969 Dr. Ali travelled U.S.A. Australia, Egypt, Tehran, Baghdad, Beirut, Istanbul and Japan.
The Message of the Qur'an Presented in Perspective (Tokyo, 1974). 1 edn. In his zeal to bring out the thematic unity of the Qur'an, the translator has devised a new Sura order, re-arranging the Suras under the following five sections which he calls as the five 'books' of the Qur'an: Book I - The Portal, al-Fatihah; Book II - The Enlightenment, ar-Ruh, 18 earliest Meccan Suras; Book III - The Guidance, al-Huda, 36 early Meccan Suras; Book IV -The Book, al-Kitab, 36 late Meccan Suras; and Book V - The Balance, al-Mizan, 24 Medinite Suras. Going a step further, he has made up 600 sections of the Text, in place of the standard 558 sections, for, what he calls, perspective purposes. In making a mess of the Sura and ruku order of the Qur'an, it does not occur to Hashim Amir Ali that the thematic unity of the Qur'an has been quite remarkably demonstrated by some exegetes without disturbing the traditional arrangements of the Qur'an. The level of translation is, however, fairly good.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLY QUR'AN [1] An Annotated Bibliography by A.R. Kidwai