Muhammad The Unknown Man (ﷺ)

About the author

Atabek Shukurov: Atabek Shukurov an-Nasafi is a contemporary scholar born in Uzbekistan during the Soviet period. He began studying in secret from around the age of ten, memorizing the Qurʾan and learning the Islamic sciences under local teachers, and completed formal training in Arabic, hadith, fiqh, usul al-fiqh, tafsir, and tajwid. By his mid-teens he was qualified to issue rulings, and he later traveled widely for advanced study, spending time in Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia and earning a degree in philosophy and theology from al-Azhar. His training places him within the Hanafi school in law and the Maturidi tradition in creed, and his stated areas of expertise include fiqh, usul al-fiqh, legal maxims (qawaʿid al-fiqh), tafsir, philosophy, and theology. He is best known among English readers for his "Principles of Testing Hadith" series, which sets out the classical hadith methodology of the Hanafi school in Arabic with English translation and commentary. The Hanafi volume, produced with his student Sulaiman Ahmed, argues that the widely taught science of hadith reflects largely Shafiʿi assumptions and presents a distinctly Hanafi approach; a companion Maliki manual has also appeared. His other writings include "Muhammad: The Unknown Man." In 2012 he co-founded the Avicenna Academy with Sulaiman Ahmed, teaching the classical Islamic sciences alongside herbal medicine.