Shaykh Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (1914–1999) was among the most influential Muslim scholars of the twentieth century—an educator, author, and civilizational thinker whose work shaped Islamic intellectual life across South Asia, the Arab world, and beyond.
In this lecture, Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi reflects on Nadwi’s life, scholarly formation, and enduring legacy, drawing on personal companionship and long years of study with him at Nadwatul ʿUlamaʾ. The talk traces Nadwi’s early upbringing and education, his mastery of Arabic and Urdu, his institutional leadership at Nadwa, and his role in building scholarly linkages between the Indian subcontinent and the wider Arabic-speaking world.
A major focus of the lecture is Nadwi’s model of religious leadership: deep grounding in the Islamic sources, sincere piety and fear of God, and an ability to understand one’s time and society. Dr. Nadwi explores how these qualities shaped Nadwi’s approach to scholarship, daʿwah, and communal guidance—especially his commitment to unity, his avoidance of divisive disputes, and his insistence that religious counsel be both principled and attentive to context.
The lecture also touches on Nadwi’s writings and his broader reflections on Muslim decline, education, and modern civilization, including his famous work on what the world lost with the decline of Islamic civilization. Together, these themes offer a portrait of a scholar whose intellectual clarity, humility, and sincerity continue to provide guidance for students of knowledge today.
In this lecture, Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi reflects on Nadwi’s life, scholarly formation, and enduring legacy, drawing on personal companionship and long years of study with him at Nadwatul ʿUlamaʾ. The talk traces Nadwi’s early upbringing and education, his mastery of Arabic and Urdu, his institutional leadership at Nadwa, and his role in building scholarly linkages between the Indian subcontinent and the wider Arabic-speaking world.
A major focus of the lecture is Nadwi’s model of religious leadership: deep grounding in the Islamic sources, sincere piety and fear of God, and an ability to understand one’s time and society. Dr. Nadwi explores how these qualities shaped Nadwi’s approach to scholarship, daʿwah, and communal guidance—especially his commitment to unity, his avoidance of divisive disputes, and his insistence that religious counsel be both principled and attentive to context.
The lecture also touches on Nadwi’s writings and his broader reflections on Muslim decline, education, and modern civilization, including his famous work on what the world lost with the decline of Islamic civilization. Together, these themes offer a portrait of a scholar whose intellectual clarity, humility, and sincerity continue to provide guidance for students of knowledge today.
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Dr. Mohammad Akram NadwiDr. Mohammad Akram Nadwi – a former research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies – is most reputed for his ground-breaking research on the female scholars of Islam in the field of Hadith. This research spanned a period of fifteen years and resulted in the 57-volume work detailing and analyzing the biographies of over 9000 female scholars from the time of Prophet Muhammad until today.
He started his Islamic education in Madrasah al-Islah, a madrasah that was started by the great Indian scholar and thinker, Moulana Hamiduddin Al-Farahi. After completing his initial studies there, he went on to join the prestigious seminary, Nadwatul ‘Ulama. He completed his ‘Alimiyyah Degree and MA in Hadith Studies with first-class honours and top of his class. He was directly appointed to teach at the Institute by the then director, Shaykh Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi. While teaching at Nadwatul ‘Ulama, Dr. Nadwi pursued further studies at Lucknow University in the field of economics (BA), and he then completed a Ph.D. program in Arabic Literature. At the request of Shaykh Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi, he joined the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford, as a research fellow in 1989. In addition to numerous research papers, he has authored and translated over thirty titles on Language, Jurisprudence, Qur’an and Hadith. In 2013, he relinquished his post at the University of Oxford to focus on his own writings, which include a comprehensive explanation on the classical hadith masterpiece Sahih Muslim. Dr. Nadwi’s authoring and teaching experience spans over 30 years. His introductory books on Arabic Grammar (Al-Nahw), Morphology (Al-Sarf) and Principles (Usul) of Tafsir, Hadith and Fiqh are used all over the world in madrasahs, Islamic institutes and colleges teaching ‘Alimiyyah (Islamic scholarship degree) students. He has also assisted several Islamic colleges with curriculum development. Dr. Nadwi’s passion for learning and teaching made him travel around the world to visit and study under many of the renowned scholars of our time, including Abul Hasan Ali Al-Nadwi, Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah, Sayyid Muhammad Alawi al-Maliki, Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan Al-Buti, Muhammad ‘Awwama, Nur al-din ‘Itr, al-Kattani, Hasan bin Siddiq Ghumari, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is widely recognized as one of Western Europe’s leading Islamic scholars and thinkers. He is a recipient of the ‘Allamah Iqbal prize for his contribution to Islamic thought and is the Dean of the Cambridge Islamic College, principal of Al-Salam Institute, and an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. |
