Syed Mujtaba Ali was born on 13 September 1904, in Karimganj, Assam Province, British India. He was a Bengali writer, journalist, travel enthusiast, academic, scholar, and linguist. He lived in Bangladesh, India, Germany Afghanistan, and Egypt.
He passed the matriculation exam from Sylhet Government Pilot High School though was said to have not passed his intermediate exam from MC College.
He went to Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan and graduated in 1926 with a B.A. degree. He was among the first graduates of the Visva-Bharati. He studied for a brief period at Aligarh Muslim University.
He could speak 14 languages – English, French, German, Italian, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Gujarati, Pashtu, and Greek. He was one of the trailblazers of a unique category of Bengali writing. ‘Ramya Rachana’ in the Bengali language, an anecdotal story-telling – often based on real-life experiences – became immensely popular, mostly because of their attractive writing style of his.
