Salah Al-Budair

Salah Al-Budair (born 7 January 1970 in Hofuf) is a Saudi imam, reciter and judge: imam and khatib of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina since 1998, guest imam at Masjid al-Haram for the Tarawih of 2005–2006, and a judge of the Medina High Court, with a doctorate in fiqh from King Faisal University (2023). ¹²

He was born in Hofuf, in the Al-Ahsa region of eastern Saudi Arabia, into the Banu Tamim tribe; Wikidata gives his birth year as 1971 against the articles' 1970. He led his first prayers as a teenager, served as imam in Dammam and then in Riyadh, took a master's in comparative jurisprudence at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University's Higher Institute of Judiciary, graduating as a judge in 1994, and was appointed to the Prophet's Mosque in 1998. ¹³⁴

Alongside the imamate he sits as a judge in Medina, has written a book on tawhid drawing on some 1,186 hadiths, and completed a doctorate in fiqh at King Faisal University in March 2023, on a commentary tradition around a Hanafi author's compilation. ¹²

He regularly leads the closing nights of Ramadan at the Prophet's Mosque and represents the imams of the two sanctuaries abroad, as in his 2025 visit to the Maldives and his 2024 visit to Pakistan. ¹⁵