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Nour-Ali Boroumand was born in Tehran in 1905 and died in Tehran in 1976/7. He was an Iranian musician and music teacher. Boroumand was brought up in a household frequented by musicians, poets and artists. His formal musical training started at the age of 12 in the form of tār lessons with Qolam Hossein Darvish Khan (1872–1926). In 1922, Borumand was sent to Germany where he attended secondary school. There he became familiar with European music and learnt the piano for two years. He continued to pursue his interest in Iranian music while studying medicine. However, failing eyesight and eventual blindness forced him to return to Iran in 1938, and after this he devoted his life to Iranian music. Over the next 30 years he led a secluded existence, studying tār and setār with a number of prominent masters, including Esmail Qahremani (b 1907), Mussa Ma'rufi (1889–1964) and Habib Somai (1901–46), with whom he also studied the santur.

In the mid-1960s Borumand began to take on a more public role and started to teach at the newly established music department at Tehran University. He later taught at the Centre for the Preservation and Propagation of Iranian Music established in Tehran in 1971. Many of his students became prominent musicians. Borumand was not primarily a performer, and for this reason was little known by the general public, but he was highly regarded as a teacher because of his excellent knowledge of the traditional classical repertory (radif). He became known outside Iran through the writings of two of his non-Iranian pupils, the ethnomusicologists Bruno Nettl and Jean During.

Borumand was a somewhat controversial figure because of his rather idiosyncratic view of the classical Iranian tradition and his conservative attitude to many of the changes that the tradition underwent, particularly from the 1950s onwards (including the introduction of staff notation). However, he was highly respected among many musicians of the late 20th century and his legacy lives on in the music and writings of those who studied with him.

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