Syed Mujtaba Ali was born on 13 September 1904 in Karimganj, Assam. His father was Sikandar Ali. Syed Mujtaba Ali's ancestral home is in Moulvibazar. He studied at Sylhet Government High School and Santiniketan. He later graduated from Visva-Bharati in 1926. He started his career as a lecturer at the College of Agricultural Sciences in Kabul, Afghanistan and later studied at the University of Berlin and the Forest. In 1932 he received his doctorate from the Forest University. During his career he taught at Al-Azha University in Egypt and Baroda College in Mysore. He joined Azizul Haq College, Bogra in 1949 as principal. But he was fired for writing articles against the Pakistani government. In 1961, he was appointed Visva-Bharati Redab. Syed Mustafa Ali is the creator of one of his own prose styles. It has become very interesting that he has composed prose with a combination of etymology and extraordinary erudition in many languages. He died on February 11, 1974 in Dhaka.
