Ali Muhsin Al-Barwani (13 January 1919 in Stone Town – 20 March 2006 in Muscat, Oman) was a Zanzibari politician and diplomat under the Sultanate of Zanzibar. He was the only Arab foreign minister of an independent Zanzibar before the establishment of the People's Republic of Zanzibar. When his government was overthrown in January 1964 Barwani was held in detention centers across Tanzania until his release in 1974, when he fled to Kenya as a refugee. After obtaining refugee status, Barwani moved to Cairo then back to Kenya then to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In the UAE, Barwani translated the Qur'an into Swahili (Swahili kiUnguja) Qur'an for which he is most prominently known. During the years of the Al Said dynasty based in Zanzibar the Barwani were involved in the development of the east African coast from Barawa (in the north, in what was to become Italian Somaliland) to Lindi, in the south, a town founded by Sheikh Ali's maternal grandfather (in what was to become German East Africa). His maternal grandmother was related to the wa Mtwapa, one of the twelve miji (or taifa 'groups') comprising Swahili Mombasa. Ali was an outstanding student and in 1937, aged eighteen, he passed effortlessly from government secondary school in Zanzibar to university at Makerere in Kampala. His admission was unusual in that he gained university entrance on the strength of a phone-call from his headmaster (L.W. Hollingsworth) to the Director of Education, Zanzibar - no examination required ! At Makerere, then the only institution for higher learning in East Africa, Ali read agriculture. A fellow student at that time was Julius Nyerere who, as President of Tanganyika, was to play a significant role in Sheikh Ali's life some 20 years later. In 1942, on his return to Zanzibar, he was employed by the Protectorate government as an assistant agricultural officer at Mangapwani. Two years later he married Bi. Azza binti Muhammad Seif Al-Busa'idi – marriage made in heaven it would seem. After the second World War (1939-1945) Ali developed a taste for politics which manifested itself in two ways. First, for some fifteen years, he edited the newspaper Mwongozi and, secondly, he joined the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. One of Ali's ambitions was to transform Zanzibar into a non-racial society and, to this end, he promoted the implementation of a common electoral roll. After the Zanzibar Sultanate attained internal self-government in