Saad al-Marsafi
- Died
- 1439 AH
- Born in
- -
Saad al-Marsafi (d. 1439 AH / 2017–2018 CE) was a contemporary Egyptian scholar of hadith and a former professor in the Faculty of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Kuwait University, known for his extensive writings on hadith and the Prophetic biography.
Career and Scholarly Contribution
Saad Muhammad Muhammad al-Shaykh al-Marsafi served as a professor of hadith and its disciplines at Kuwait University, where he taught courses in the Prophetic biography (sīrah) for several years. He devoted more than fifty years to research in original Islamic sources, focusing on evaluating historical and biographical accounts through the classical rules of hadith transmission and critical analysis (riwāyah and dirāyah).
In his multi-volume study al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ li al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah (The Authentic Compendium of the Prophetic Biography), al-Marsafi re-examined the events of the Prophet's life strictly through authenticated transmissions to distinguish sound accounts from weak historical narratives. He also engaged in apologetics and critical defense of the Sunna against modern Western scholarship in al-Mustashriqūn wa al-Sunnah (The Orientalists and the Sunna), in which he applied the methodological principles of hadith verification to counter doubts regarding the textual integrity and transmission of Prophetic traditions.
Answer updated
List of Works
al-Jami al-Sahih li al-Sira al-Nabawiya (The Authentic Compendium of the Prophetic Biography) is a contemporary multi-volume work on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. It provides an authentic, critically verified record of his life from the premonitory signs preceding his mission through the establishment of the community, evaluating historical narrations according to classical principles of hadith criticism in both transmission and analysis while addressing historical misconceptions.
al-Mustashriqun wa al-Sunna (The Orientalists and the Sunna) is a contemporary treatise in Hadith studies written to refute Western Orientalist critiques concerning the authority, terminology, transmission, and textual corpus of Prophetic Hadith. Using the technical principles of Hadith criticism, the work addresses doubts surrounding the concept and codification of the Sunna as well as misconceptions regarding the chain of transmission and the text.