Sa'd Muhammad al-Marsafi Biography

Dr. Sa'd Muhammad Hasan al-Marsafi was an Egyptian Islamic scholar, hadith specialist, and longtime professor at Kuwait University whose works on hadith methodology, Qur'anic studies, and orientalist scholarship circulated widely through the International Islamic Publishing House (IIPH) and other major Arabic and English Sunni publishers. Born in 1357 AH / 1938 CE in Egypt, he completed his Islamic studies at al-Azhar University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and PhD in the Sciences of Hadith with specialization in the methodologies of hadith authentication.

Al-Marsafi spent the major portion of his teaching career at Kuwait University, where he served as a professor of hadith at the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies for several decades, training generations of students in the Sunni hadith tradition. His published works include Mustalah al-Hadith on hadith terminology, several detailed studies of specific hadith narrators and chains, and accessible thematic works for general audiences — including The Real Bishara of Jesus About Muhammad ﷺ (a comparative-religion study of Christ's foretelling of the final messenger), translated into English by IIPH, and shorter works on Qur'anic ethics and Islamic creed.

Al-Marsafi's distinctive contribution lay in bridging the technical discipline of hadith verification with the broader Islamic readership: his works are characterized by careful methodological grounding, extensive primary-source citation, and accessible Arabic and English prose that opened the rigorous standards of hadith scholarship to general readers and students. He died in 1437 AH / 2016 CE. His works remain in continuous use in Sunni hadith studies programs across the Arab world and English-speaking Muslim educational institutions.