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Dr. Ziyaud-Din Abdul-Hayy Desai (1925-2002) has had an exceptionally brilliant career throughout topping the list of successful candidates at the B.A. and M.A. examinations of the undivided Bombay University. After teaching Persian at university level for about six years, he joined the Archaeological Survey of India as the head of its Perso-Arabic epigraphy section in 1953 and finally retired as Director (Epigraphy) after a distinguished career of three decades. Recipient of many prizes and medals including the Chancellors’ medal, Epigraphical Society of India’s distinguished Epigraphist Award, President of India’s Award and Sir Jadu Nath Sarkar Gold Medal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Dr. Desai has been responsible for establishing the Perso-Arabic epigraphical studies on a sound footing. During his tenure, thousands of inscriptions were copied from all over India and listed in the Annual Reports on Indian Epigraphy and hundreds of them published with texts, English translations, historical notes and facsimiles in the Epigraphia Indica Arabic and Persian Supplement of which he edited twenty bulky issues. Dr. Desai is the author of a dozen and a half works and of more than 350 articles on Indo-Muslim history, art, architecture and numismatics, Indo-Persian literature, old Urdu (Gujari Language). Etc.