Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi is an Islamic scholar, author and teacher with more than four decades of work in teaching, research and writing. His scholarship spans Hadith, fiqh, Quranic studies, Arabic language, Islamic history and the wider intellectual tradition of Islam. His scholarly output includes more than 80 books, over 1,000 articles and a number of substantial multi-volume research works.
Early Life and Education
Shaykh Akram was born in 1963 in Jamdaha, a village in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
He began his formal studies with Persian at Madrasah Diya al-Ulum in Mani Kalan, where he studied classical works including the Gulistan, Bustan and Akhlaq-e-Muhsini. He later continued his study of Persian literature independently, reading major works such as the Diwan of Hafiz and Rumi’s Mathnawi.
Having established a strong foundation in Persian, he then turned to Arabic, studying for three years at the Maulana Azad Educational Centre in Usrahta. There, he developed a firm grounding in grammar and the linguistic sciences, laying the foundations for his subsequent advanced studies.
Nadwat al-Ulama and Scholarly Formation
He later joined Darul Uloom Nadwat al-Ulama in Lucknow, where he undertook advanced studies in the traditional Islamic sciences, including fiqh, tafsir, Arabic literature and related disciplines, with a specialisation in Hadith. His specialist research examined Quranic exegesis in Sahih al-Bukhari, under the title Tafsir al-Imam al-Bukhari.
His years at Nadwa brought him into close contact with a number of scholars who played important and distinctive roles in his intellectual formation. Mawlana Abu al-Hasan Ali Nadwi became a particularly important teacher and mentor, encouraging his scholarly development and exerting a lasting influence on the direction of his academic life.
Among his other teachers was Mawlana Rabey Hasani Nadwi, with whom he studied literary criticism and the philosophy of Islamic education. He also studied Arabic literature and composition with Mawlana Saeedur Rahman Azami Nadwi, further developing his literary and expressive abilities.
Mawlana Muhammad Wazih Rashid Nadwi was another important influence, particularly in writing, Islamic thought and intellectual formation, helping to shape the clarity and breadth of Shaykh Akram’s scholarly outlook.
His relationship with Mawlana Shahbaz Islahi was especially formative in shaping his way of thinking. Through sustained study and discussion, Shahbaz Islahi encouraged careful questioning, critical examination of arguments and independent scholarly enquiry. He also deepened Shaykh Akram’s engagement with the Quranic thought and interpretive insights associated with Hamid al-Din Farahi. His influence, however, extended well beyond any single school of tafsir, helping to shape Shaykh Akram’s broader approach to reasoning, scholarship and the evaluation of ideas.
Alongside his traditional Islamic education, Shaykh Akram pursued higher education at Lucknow University, completing a BA in Economics, followed by an MA in Arabic Language, and later a PhD in Arabic. His university studies complemented his classical scholarly formation and further developed his academic research and methodology.
Following his studies, Shaykh Akram joined the teaching faculty at Nadwat al-Ulama in 1984, where he taught until 1990. During these years, he continued his own research and higher education alongside his teaching responsibilities.
In 1986, during this period at Nadwa, he spent a year in Riyadh undertaking a teacher-training programme at King Saud University. While there, he studied privately with two leading Hadith scholars of the period, Dr Muhammad Mustafa al-Azami and Shaykh Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah. He also worked closely with both scholars, assisting them in aspects of their scholarly and research work. This period provided an important opportunity for sustained personal study and further deepened his engagement with Hadith criticism, methodology and the classical scholarly tradition.
Oxford and Research
In 1991, Shaykh Akram moved to the United Kingdom after Mawlana Abu al-Hasan Ali Nadwi nominated and encouraged him to take up a research position at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
From 1991 to 2015, he served as a Research Fellow at the Centre. His research encompassed Hadith, Islamic legal thought, Islamic intellectual history, Arabic literature and related fields. It also included a substantial multi-volume study of the history and development of Sufi orders in South Asia, a work that remains unpublished.
His years at Oxford provided the setting for a substantial part of his research and writing and enabled sustained engagement with both the classical Islamic scholarly tradition and contemporary academic methods of study.
In 2015, after more than two decades at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, he stepped down from his position as Research Fellow to devote greater attention to teaching, writing and independent scholarly work, including his growing teaching commitments through Al-Salam Institute.
Scholarship and Writing
Shaykh Akram’s writings span Hadith, fiqh, Quranic studies, Arabic language, Islamic history, biography and the wider Islamic intellectual tradition.
Among his most significant works is al-Wafa bi Asma al-Nisa, his monumental 43-volume Arabic biographical dictionary of women scholars and narrators of Hadith. Developed through decades of research, the work records the lives and scholarly contributions of approximately 10,000 women across Islamic history.
Its introductory study was made available to English readers through Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam, presenting the background, findings and wider significance of the much larger Arabic project.
His scholarship also includes a major twenty-three-volume Arabic commentary on Sahih Muslim. A distinctive feature of the work is its attempt to recover and explain Imam Muslim’s own methodology in the selection, criticism and arrangement of Hadith. Shaykh Akram examines the distinction between primary and supporting narrations, reports included to expose hidden defects, the ordering of chains and texts, and differences between the approaches of Imam Muslim and Imam al-Bukhari. The commentary seeks to read Sahih Muslim through the methods of the early Hadith critics, rather than primarily through later chapter structures and interpretive categories.
He is also currently preparing a comprehensive tafsir of the Quran. His approach brings together close attention to the Quran’s language, structure, context and internal relationships with Hadith, fiqh and the wider classical exegetical tradition. Although his engagement with Quranic coherence has been influenced in part by the intellectual tradition associated with Hamid al-Din Farahi, his approach is not confined to a Farahian framework. It also reflects the broader method of disciplined enquiry and independent thought instilled in him by Mawlana Shahbaz Islahi, an influence that shaped not simply his approach to tafsir but his wider scholarly method.
A recurring feature of Shaykh Akram’s scholarship is an emphasis on returning directly to foundational texts, examining the reasoning and methodology of earlier scholars, and distinguishing between the original structures of classical sources and interpretations or categories that developed around them in later periods.
Alongside his specialist research, he has written and taught extensively for wider audiences, seeking to connect rigorous engagement with the Islamic tradition to the intellectual, ethical and spiritual questions faced by Muslims today.
If the Oceans Were Ink
Shaykh Akram’s life and scholarship received wider international attention through Carla Power’s 2015 book, If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran.
The book follows a year of conversations and Quranic study between Power and Shaykh Akram, exploring questions of faith, interpretation and Muslim intellectual life. It was subsequently named a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Teaching and Educational Institutions
Teaching has remained central to Shaykh Akram’s work throughout his scholarly career. Alongside his research and writing, he has continued to teach the traditional Islamic sciences to students in Britain and internationally.
In 2006, while still serving as a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, he began teaching a structured programme of traditional Islamic studies through Al-Salam Institute. The Institute developed into a major part-time programme for the systematic study of Arabic and the Islamic sciences, through which he has taught generations of students.
He continues to serve as Principal of Al-Salam Institute, teaching subjects including Hadith, fiqh, tafsir and advanced classical texts.
In 2013, Cambridge Islamic College was established with the aim of developing advanced and full-time study of the traditional Islamic sciences in Cambridge. Shaykh Akram played a significant role in its academic development and teaching, and his teaching continues to form part of its educational programmes.
ASI Research Centre for Islamic Studies
In 2026, the ASI Research Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford was established as a centre dedicated to faith-informed research in the Islamic sciences and wider Islamic studies. Shaykh Akram serves as its Founding Scholar.
The Centre provides the institutional home for the Akram Nadwi Research Project, a long-term initiative dedicated to preserving, organising, developing and making accessible his scholarly work. This includes his writings and archives, new publications and translations, ongoing research, and the development of AkramNadwi.com as the central digital home for his scholarship.
Through his teaching, research and writing, Shaykh Akram continues to pursue a scholarly approach deeply rooted in the classical Islamic tradition while remaining attentive to the intellectual, educational and spiritual needs of the present.