Mustafa al-Azami

Muhammad Mustafa al-Azami (1932-2017 CE) was one of the most distinguished Muslim hadith scholars of the modern era and a pioneer of academic Islamic studies in Western universities. Born in Mau, Uttar Pradesh (India), he studied at Darul Ulum Deoband and al-Azhar before earning his PhD from Cambridge University in 1966. He served as a professor at King Saud University in Riyadh and Indiana University. His doctoral thesis, published as Studies in Early Hadith Literature, was a landmark academic rebuttal of Joseph Schacht's skeptical theories about hadith authenticity. His other major works include On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence and The History of the Quranic Text. He received the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies in 1980.