Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Aydarus محمد بن علوي العيدروس

A Hadrami scholar of the Ba ʿAlawi sayyid lineage, Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Aydarus (1351–1432 AH / 1932–2011 CE), known also as Saʿd, was born in Tarim, Yemen, in Rabiʿ al-Awwal 1351 AH. He grew up in that city of scholars and took knowledge from its teachers, especially at the renowned Rubat Tarim, the great teaching institute of Hadramawt. Shafiʿi in law and Ashʿari in creed, he stood within the Ba ʿAlawi Sufi tradition of his forebears. He later moved to Aden, and during a period of imprisonment under the communist authorities he committed the entire Qurʾan to memory. Returning to teaching, he served as an imam and founded a school dedicated to Qurʾanic memorization, raising up many huffaz. He lived quietly and modestly, with little appetite for public attention, yet his influence spread through writing: he composed close to one hundred works, brief, useful, and inexpensive, spanning religious, scholarly, and cultural subjects, enriching the libraries of Hadramawt and Yemen. He worked to rebuild scholarly and devotional life in his region after years of upheaval. Several of his treatises have reached English readers, among them Reviving the Neglected Sunnah, The Book of Intentions, Curing Forgetfulness, and Secrets of Tarim. He died in Tarim on 8 Dhu al-Qaʿda 1432 AH (6 October 2011) and was buried in the historic Zanbal cemetery.