Hassan was born in 1880 in British India in the town of Milpur on the outskirts of Hasan Abdal, to Maulana Allah Dad, a pious family of the Utmanzai tribe of Pathans.
Hassan received his certificate of Tajwid and Art of Recitation from Karim Bakhsh and graduated from Darul Uloom Deoband by renewing the Hadith study from Anwar Shah Kashmiri.
In 1947, he established a religious institution in Lahore called Jamia Ashrafia under the name of Ashraf Ali Thanwi.
Funeral prayers were offered by Maulana Shah Abdul Ghani and he was buried in the Society Cemetery in Karachi.
Islamic historians Syed Sulaiman Nadvi and Abdul Majid Daryabadi were also associated with the footsteps of Muhammad Hassan.