Al-Albani

Muhammad Nasir al-Din^[a] (1914 – 2 October 1999), commonly known as al-Albani,^[b] was an Albanian Islamic scholar. A leading figure of Wahhabism, he is commemorated for his works on revaluation of hadith studies.

Born in Shkodër, Albania, to a family adhering to the Hanafi school, al-Albani began his religious journey in Damascus, Syria, where he studied under his father Nuh Najati and other local shaykhs. Influenced by the Lebanese-born Islamic scholar Rashid Rida, al-Albani developed an interest in hadith studies and became skeptical of Sufism, as well as the Hanafi school he grew up in. He eventually left the school and became a staunch critic of following a madhhab (school of thought) for Islamic jurisprudence, which made him a controversial figure amongst traditionalist Sunni Muslims. Al-Albani was arrested twice by the Ba'athist Syrian authorities in the 1960s for promoting Wahhabism. Later, he taught for three years at the Islamic University of Madinah at the request of Saudi grand mufti Ibn Baz. Afterward, al-Albani retired at the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus, Syria, and later shifted to Amman, Jordan where he died in 1999.

Al-Albani's works include over a 300 treatises, including Silsalat al-Hadith al-Sahiha and Sifat Salat al-Nabi. He spent much of his life critically re-evaluating hadiths and believed many previously accepted hadiths were unsound. His reassessment of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the two most-revered Sunni hadith compilations, was challenged by a number of Sunni hadith scholars, including Abu Ghudda and Mahmud Sa'id Mamduh. On the contrary, al-Albani was highly praised by mainstream Wahhabi scholars and was considered one of the "four shaykhs", along with Ibn Baz, Ibn Jibrin and al-Uthaymin. Al-Albani's contributions to hadith studies also led him to be known as the "al-Bukhari of the contemporary age" by Wahhabis.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).