He was the authoritative scholar of the Islamic sciences, the Qur’anic exegete, Hadith expert, jurist, and Sufi, Zafar Ahmad ibn Latif ‘Uthmani al-Thanawi. He was born the 13th of Rabi’ al-Awwal, 1310 ah. His mother died when he was only three, so his grandmother raised him. She was a righteous woman who had performed the hajj. She raised him well, and he benefited from her rectitude and piety (taqwa).
At the age of five, he began studying and memorizing the Qur’an with the principal reciters. At age seven, he began studying Urdu and Persian, as well as mathematics, with the great scholar and author, Mawlana Muhammad Yasin, the father of Mawlana Mufti Muhammad Shafi’ ‘Uthmani. Later, he studied the various Islamic sciences with the foremost scholars of India under the direct guidance and supervision of his uncle, Imam Ashraf ‘Ali al-Thanawi. He gave particular emphasis to Sacred Law (fiqh) and hadith studies, became highly proficient in both, and distinguished above other students by his intellectual ability, and the benefit of his great uncle’s tutelage.