When the Moon Split

Shaykh Safi al-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri was an Indian Islamic scholar, hadith specialist, and seerah writer best known internationally for his award-winning biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, Ar-Raheeq al-Makhtum (translated as The Sealed Nectar) — for many decades the most widely distributed English-language seerah in the world. Born in 1361 AH / 1942 CE in the village of Husainabad in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, India, he began his Qur'anic studies at home with his grandfather and uncle before progressing through the regional madrasa system and graduating from Madrasah Faiz-e-Aam in 1961.

Mubarakpuri spent the next three decades teaching at Islamic seminaries across northern India, including positions at Madrasah Faiz al-Ulum, Madrasah Dar al-Hadith, and other institutions. Ar-Raheeq al-Makhtum was originally written in Arabic for the Muslim World League's 1979 international seerah competition, where it placed first among 1,182 submissions and received the prize of fifty thousand Saudi riyals. The work has since been translated into more than two dozen languages. From 1988 until his death he served as a research scholar at Markaz Khidmat al-Sunnah wa al-Sirah, and from 1998 he worked with Maktabah Darussalam in Riyadh as a senior research scholar, producing major edited works including Ittihaf al-Kiram (a commentary on Bulugh al-Maram) and Minnat al-Mun'im (a four-volume Arabic commentary on Sahih Muslim).

Mubarakpuri returned to Husainabad in his final years and died there on Friday 1 December 2006 / 11 Dhu al-Qa'dah 1427 after a long illness. His seerah remains one of the most widely consulted introductions to the life of the Prophet ﷺ in the English-speaking Muslim world.