Cherágh Ali

Born in Meerut in 1844, Cherágh Ali was an Indian Muslim scholar and civil servant who became known for his reform-minded reading of Islam. He was educated at home and is described as having studied a remarkable range of languages, including Persian, Arabic, and English.

During his career he worked in North India before moving into the service of the Hyderabad state, where he was recommended for a post by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. The two men were closely connected in outlook, and Cherágh Ali became one of the notable intellectual supporters of the wider Muslim modernist movement associated with Aligarh.

He is best remembered for works such as A Critical Exposition of the Popular Jihad and Proposed Political, Legal and Social Reforms under Moslem Rule. In these writings, he argued that many widely accepted ideas about Islamic law and warfare came from later interpretation rather than the Qur'an itself. He died in 1895, leaving behind a body of work that continued to matter in discussions of Islamic reform.