Al-Albani, Muhammad Nasir al-Din

Muhammad Nasir al-Din ibn Nuh ibn Adam Najati al-Albani was a hadith scholar of Albanian origin and Syrian nationality, distinguished in the authentication and grading of hadiths and in hadith jurisprudence. ¹ He was born in Shkodër, Albania, on 16 August 1914, grew up in Damascus, and became one of the most famous hadith scholars of the modern age and a prominent figure of modern Salafism, known for his rigorous re-evaluation of hadith literature and for rejecting adherence to the traditional schools of jurisprudence; his Salafi admirers gave him the title "al-Bukhari of the contemporary age". The encyclopaedia records that he was born in 1333 AH (1914 CE) and died in 1420 AH (1999 CE). ^{2 3 1}

He was born in Shkodër to a family adhering to the Hanafi school; his father, Nuh Najati, was a Hanafi jurist trained in Istanbul. Fearing the rise of secularism under Zog I, his father withdrew him from school in Albania, and in 1923, when al-Albani was nine, the family moved to Damascus, then under French occupation. ²

In Damascus he began religious studies under his father and local scholars, learned Arabic at the al-Is'af school, and came to be known as al-Albani ("the Albanian") after leaving formal schooling. He studied the Hanafi text Maraqi al-Falah under Sa'id al-Burhani and Mukhtasar al-Quduri with Syrian teachers, and earned a modest living as a carpenter before joining his father as a watchmaker. Around the age of twenty, despite his father's discouragement, he turned to hadith studies, influenced by Muhammad Rashid Rida, studying under Muhammad Bahjat al-Baytar, Izz al-Din al-Tanukhi, Sa'id al-Burhani and Ibn al-Baghi, among others. His early scholarly work, a commentary on al-Iraqi's takhrij of the hadiths of the Ihya, began his scholarly career and brought him recognition in Damascus's religious circles. ²

He began writing articles, some published in al-Manar magazine, and taught two weekly lessons on creed, jurisprudence and hadith that attracted students and university professors, alongside preaching trips to cities in Syria and Jordan. The article's introduction records that he was twice imprisoned in Syria for his teachings. ²

In 1961 he was among the scholars invited to teach at the newly established Islamic University of Madinah. In 1963 he left Saudi Arabia amid hostility stemming partly from his views, including his suggestion that Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was not entirely Salafi because of his Hanbali adherence, and his criticism of him for exaggeration and harshness. He resumed work at the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus, leaving his watch shop to a brother. He lectured in Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Spain and the United Kingdom; after Grand Mufti Ibn Baz intervened, he was invited again to Saudi Arabia to head higher education in Islamic law in Mecca. He later returned to Syria and eventually settled in Jordan for the remainder of his life. ²

Al-Albani was a prominent proponent of Salafism. He criticised all the mainstream Sunni legal schools and rejected taqlid, the obligation to follow a school of jurisprudence, spending much of his life critically re-evaluating hadith literature and arguing that many widely accepted narrations were unsound. His independent rulings often diverged from mainstream consensus: he held that mihrabs were a religious innovation, that praying in a mosque wearing shoes was permissible, that women were prohibited from wearing gold bracelets, and — in his 1952 book Hijab al-Mar'a al-Muslima — that a woman's face could remain uncovered. He called on Palestinians to leave the occupied territories, arguing they could not properly practise their faith there; the stance provoked significant criticism, including from within the Wahhabi movement itself. ²

He praised Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab for his reformist dawah in Najd while criticising him for "exaggeration and harshness" and for being "weak in hadith and jurisprudence". He preached against what he considered the warped literalism of extremists. He criticised influential Islamist thinkers: he accused Sayyid Qutb of theological deviation, and accused Hassan al-Banna of not being a religious scholar and of holding positions contrary to the Sunna. The museum presents these views attributed to him as the article reports them, and does not adopt them. ²

This section should be read as a presentation of differing positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's judgement on any of them. The English and Arabic articles report these positions; the original statements of the critics have not all yet been reviewed.

His critics: In the early 1970s the Syrian hadith scholar Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda published a tract against al-Albani's re-evaluation of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Mahmud Sa'id Mamduh, who studied with Abu Ghudda, wrote at least four rebuttals, including Alerting the Muslim to al-Albani's Transgression upon Sahih Muslim, in which he wrote, in the article's rendering: "I have concluded that his methods disagree with those of the jurists and hadith scholars, and that his methods are creating great disarray and evident disruption in the proofs of jurisprudence." Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti criticised his anti-madhhab stance and his call for Palestinians to leave their lands, in two rebuttal books. Other critics included Nur al-Din Itr, Abdullah Sirajuddin al-Husayni, Gibril Fouad Haddad, who called him "the chief innovator of our time", and Hasan al-Saqqaf, who composed a book against him. ²

His supporters: Among Salafis his reassessment of canonical collections such as Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim earned him the epithet "al-Bukhari of the contemporary age". The scholar Emad Hamdeh describes him as a prolific author of more than 200 works on hadith, jurisprudence and creed — 217 books in his count. The English article says he authored over 200 works, while the Arabic article says more than 300 books; the exact number needs a specialised source before it can be stated precisely. ^{2 4}

His notable writings include:

• Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahiha (Series of Authentic Hadiths).
• Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Da'ifa wa-l-Mawdu'a (Series of Weak and Fabricated Hadiths).
• Sifat Salat al-Nabi (The Characteristics of the Prophet ﷺ's Prayer), in which his conclusions on the gestures and formulae of prayer diverged from all the established Sunni schools and provoked considerable controversy.
• Sahih al-Jami' al-Saghir wa-Ziyadatihi and Da'if al-Jami' al-Saghir wa-Ziyadatihi.
• Hijab al-Mar'a al-Muslima fi-l-Kitab wa-l-Sunna (1952). ^{2 4}

He settled in Jordan in his later years, continuing to lecture and receive visitors, and died in Amman in 1999 at the age of 85; his wife was Umm al-Fadl. The encyclopaedia gives the year as 1420 AH (1999 CE) without a day. The day itself is unsettled in the digital sources: the English article's lead and Wikidata give 3 October 1999, while the article's text says 2 October — so this record keeps the year on which the encyclopaedia and the article agree, and does not adopt a day until a second source settles it. ^{2 1 3}

His teachings inspired a generation of students in Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and his two hadith series remain standard references in contemporary hadith study — for supporters of his method of re-evaluation and for its critics alike, as the positions section above records. ²

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.