محمد مرتضى الحسيني الزبيدي

Murtada al-Zabidi (RH)

Muhammad Murtada al-Husayni al-Zabidi

Also known as: al-Zabidi, Murtaza al-Zabidi, Murtadha al-Zabidi, al-Bilgrami

1145–1205 AH · 1732–1791 CE

Hadith Hanafi Sufism

Indian-born scholar of Cairo, author of the dictionary Taj al-'Arus and of Ithaf al-Sadah, a great commentary on al-Ghazali's Ihya'.

Murtada al-Zabidi was born in 1732 in Bilgram in north India, to a family of sayyids whose roots lay in Wasit in Iraq. He studied hadith in several towns of north India, among others with Shah Waliullah in Delhi, and at about sixteen went to Yemen to study in Zabid, from which he took his name. He made the pilgrimage and studied in the Hijaz, where the scholar Ibn al-Tayyib al-Fasi encouraged his work on the Arabic lexicon. At the end of 1753 he settled in Cairo, where he spent the rest of his life.

In Cairo he became one of the most sought-after teachers of his age. He held public sessions dictating hadith, gave licences to students from Morocco to India, and corresponded with scholars and rulers across the Muslim world. His Taj al-'Arus, an expansion of al-Firuzabadi's Qamus that took him about fourteen years, is still the largest classical Arabic dictionary. His Ithaf al-Sadah al-Muttaqin is a vast commentary on al-Ghazali's Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din that also traces its hadith. He was initiated into several Sufi orders and wrote on their chains. He died suddenly in Cairo in 1791.

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