Shaikh Zia ur Rahman Azami, one of the greatest scholars of Islam in recent times, breathed his last in Madinah on July 30, the day of Arafat in Saudi Arabia.
Born “Banke Laal” to a Brahman Hindu family of Bilarya Ganj, a village located in the district of Azamgarh in India in 1943, he reverted to Islam when he was just 18 years old.
He travelled to South India and studied in various Islamic seminaries of India. Then he joined Madina University in Madinah Munawwarah. He did MA from Umm Al-Qura University Makkah. He obtained PhD degree from Jamia Azhar, Cairo. Prof Zia ur-Rahman Azami retired as Dean of Faculty of Hadith at the famous Islamic University of Madinah. After retirement, he was appointed teacher at the Prophet’s Mosque by the decree of the Head of the Prophet’s Mosque Affairs in the year 2013.
Prof. Azami made some of the greatest contributions to Islam in modern times, and authored dozens of books, translation of whom have been done in different languages. But the most important of his works is the voluminous compilation of authentic Hadith titled “Al-Jami’ al-Kamil fi al-Hadith al-Sahih al-Shamil”. It is one of the most comprehensive books on Hadith by a single scholar since the dawn of Islam. Prof. Azami took pain to collect the authentic Hadiths dispersed in about 200 classical books. He has compiled about 16,000 Hadiths. The compilation has 20 volumes, without a single hadith repeating itself.
He also authored an internationally recognised work titled “Qur’an Encyclopaedia” which classified and explained the words of the Qur’an in alphabetic order. The book was translated into other languages.
For his contributions to Islam Shaikh Zia Ur Rahman was given honorary citizenship of Saudi Arabia, an honour which is rarely granted.
His janazah (funeral) was conducted at the Prophet’s ﷺ Mosque in Madinah and he was buried in Baqi al Gharqad near the graves of the family and companions of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.