An Explanation of Imam Ahmad's Foundations of the Sunnah

Shaykh Rabi' ibn Hadi 'Umayr al-Madkhali was a Saudi hadith scholar and former head of the Department of Sunna at the Islamic University of Madinah, where he taught for more than three decades and trained generations of students drawn from across the Muslim world. Born in 1932 in the village of al-Ja'dayn in the Jazan region of southwestern Saudi Arabia, he memorized the Qur'an in his youth and pursued his Islamic education first in Jazan and then at the Imam al-Da'wa Institute in Riyadh, completing his bachelor's degree, master's degree, and PhD in Hadith Sciences at the Islamic University of Madinah, where his dissertation focused on the criticism of hadith narrators in the classical biographical tradition.

Al-Madkhali's published corpus is centered on hadith methodology, narrator-criticism, and Sunni creed. His major works include Bayan Fasad al-Mi'yar on the science of evaluating narrators; al-Tankil bi-ma fi Lubb al-Albab min al-Aba'til; Manhaj Ahl al-Sunna fi Naqd al-Rijal wa al-Kutub wa al-Tawa'if ('The Methodology of the People of Sunna in Critiquing Individuals, Books, and Sects'); his commentary Sharh al-'Aqida al-Wasitiyya; and a long list of treatises on creed, manhaj, and the principles of Salafi scholarship. Several of his works have been translated into English and other languages by independent Salafi-oriented publishers.

Al-Madkhali died on 9 July 2025 / 14 Muharram 1447 at the age of ninety-three. His decades of teaching at the Islamic University of Madinah produced generations of students now active in da'wah, academic, and judicial roles across the Muslim world, and his writings on the principles of hadith criticism and narrator evaluation continue to be studied within the broader Salafi scholarly tradition associated with his teachers and contemporaries.