Mirwaiz Yusuf Shah

Mirwaiz Muhammad Yusuf Shah (19 February 1894 – 12 December 1968) was a Kashmiri religious scholar and politician who held the office of Mirwaiz of Kashmir, the hereditary head preacher of the Kashmir Valley based at Srinagar's Jamia Masjid, from 1931 until his death.¹² Born in Rajouri Kadal, Srinagar, he studied at Darul Uloom Deoband from 1925, taking hadith from Anwar Shah Kashmiri, and took a Moulvi Fazil degree from the University of the Punjab.¹

In politics he co-founded the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference in 1932 and, after breaking with Sheikh Abdullah over opening the party to non-Muslims, founded the Azad Muslim Conference in 1934 and supported Kashmir's accession to Pakistan.² Exiled after 1947, he settled in Azad Kashmir and twice served as its president, in 1951–1952 and again in 1956.¹ His Kashmiri translation and commentary of the Quran, Bayan-ul-Furqan, completed in 1957, was the first comprehensive rendering of the Quran in Kashmiri.² He died in Rawalpindi on 12 December 1968.³