Forgotten Moments from the Isra & Miraj

About the author

Muhammad Metwalli al-Sharawi: Muhammad Metwalli al-Sharawi (1911-1998 CE) was among the most beloved Qurʾan teachers of the modern Arab world, honored in Egypt as Imam al-Duʿat, the "leader of the preachers." He was born on April 15, 1911, in the village of Daqadus near Mit Ghamr in the Daqahliyya province of the Nile Delta, and had memorized the entire Qurʾan by around the age of eleven. He pursued his studies at al-Azhar in Cairo, graduating from the Faculty of Arabic Language in 1941. Over the following decades he taught Shariʿa abroad, including years at Umm al-Qura University and at King Abdulaziz University in Makka, and he served as Egypt's Minister of Endowments (Awqaf) from 1976 to 1978 under President Anwar Sadat. Ashʿari in creed, al-Sharawi became a household name across the Arabic-speaking world through his televised Qurʾanic reflections, Khawatir al-Shaʿrawi, in which he unfolded the meanings of verses in simple, vivid language that reached scholars and ordinary listeners alike. His spoken commentary was later gathered into a large printed tafsir, and many shorter treatises on faith, the unseen, and questions of good and evil circulate under his name. He died on June 17, 1998, mourned widely across Egypt and beyond. The works offered here, on the Qurʾan's wonders, the hereafter, and the trials of this life, carry forward his gift for making scripture speak to the everyday believer.