Saeed-ur-Rahman Azmi Nadvi

Saeed-ur-Rahman Azmi was born on 14 May 1934 in Ilahdadpura, Mau, then in Azamgarh district of the United Provinces (Mau became a separate district in 1988). Al-Ba'th al-Islami gives this date, as do PTI and Wikipedia; one Urdu obituary (Awaz The Voice) gives 1935.

His father, Shaikh Muhammad Ayub Azmi, son of Shaikh Muhammad Sabir, was a hadith scholar educated at Darul Uloom Deoband. He led Jamia Miftahul Uloom in Mau for about 25 years and was its Shaikh al-Hadith for ten more, taught hadith at Nadwa in the 1960s, and spent 21 years as Shaikh al-Hadith at Jamia Talimuddin in Dabhel, Gujarat. He was born in 1898 and died on 6 July 1984. His father and his elder brother, Shaikh Aziz-ur-Rahman Azmi, supervised the boy's upbringing and early lessons.

He completed his higher studies at Jamia Miftahul Uloom in Mau, reading the six canonical hadith collections under his father, Habib-ur-Rahman Azmi and Abdul Latif Nomani, and graduated around 1950 to 1951. He went to Darul Uloom Deoband in 1949 but returned after a week.

In 1952 he joined Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow in the first year of advanced literature studies, and in his second year was elected general secretary of its Arabic club, Al-Nadi al-Arabi. His teachers included Mufti Muhammad Saeed, Dr. Abdullah Abbas Nadwi, Abdul Hafeez Baliyawi, Abul Irfan Khan Nadwi, Shah Halim Ata, Muhammad Ishaq Sandilvi, Muhammad Sami Siddiqui and Syed Muhammad Rabey Hasani Nadwi. He also attended the Quran lessons of Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi at the Tablighi centre in Aminabad to refine his Arabic.

In 1958, at Ali Nadwi's suggestion, he spent eleven months in Baghdad studying with the Moroccan scholar Dr. Taqiuddin al-Hilali, reading Ibn Hisham's Sharh Shudhur al-Dhahab and the Hamasa anthology with him. In the 1970s he registered for a doctorate at Al-Azhar in Cairo but returned to India because of his workload. On Ali Nadwi's advice he wrote his doctoral thesis at Nadwa on the poets of the Prophet (Shu'ara al-Rasul), supervised by Rabey Hasani Nadwi. It was completed in 1992 and examined by scholars from Aligarh Muslim University and Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh.

After his advanced studies he joined Nadwa's Takmeel (completion) department and began teaching, joining the faculty in the mid 1950s. He became a senior teacher of Arabic language and literature and later headed the Arabic department.

He joined the editorial team of the Arabic monthly Al-Ba'th al-Islami when it was founded in 1955 by Syed Muhammad al-Hasani, and became editor-in-chief after al-Hasani's death in 1979. He was also deputy editor of the Arabic fortnightly Al-Ra'id. From 1991 to 1993 he supervised editorial work at Nadwa, from 1993 to 1999 he was dean of the Faculty of Arabic Language and Literature, and in 2000 he was appointed Mohtamim (principal or rector) of Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, the tenth person in the office, serving until his death in 2026. For more than half a century he was also imam and khatib of the Nadwa mosque, and he travelled to many countries for teaching and dawah.

He served as chancellor of Integral University in Lucknow (Wikipedia describes him as its first chancellor). He was among the founding members of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and remained a senior member. He was a member of the World League of Islamic Literature (Rabita Adab-e-Islami), vice president of the Deeni Talimi Council, and patron or administrator of several madrasas. Rotary International's Ashok Mahajan recalled him as a member of the Rotary Ulema Committee that contributed to India's polio-free campaign.

He belonged to the Nadwa tradition that pairs religious learning with Arabic language, literature and engagement with contemporary ideas. His book Islam and the West and his editorials in Al-Ba'th al-Islami addressed the relationship between Muslim societies and modern Western thought. As a Muslim Personal Law Board elder he took part in debates on Muslim personal law and Shariah.

Arabic works include Shu'ara al-Rasul fi Daw' al-Waqi' wa al-Qarid, Sa'a ma'a al-Arifin, Suwar min Waqi' al-Din, Jahiliyyat al-Lugha wa Jinayatuha ala al-Din wa al-Insaniyya, Ahmad bin Irfan al-Mujahid al-Shahid, Nadwat al-Ulama Tuwajih al-Tahaddi al-Kabir, and Al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya: Munjazat, Mushkilat, Turuq al-Mu'alaja. Urdu works include Islam aur Maghrib (Islam and the West), 48 Saal Shafqaton ke Saaye Mein, Ilm al-Tasrif, Khutbat-e-Ilm-o-Dawat and Uswa-e-Nabawi ke Aaine Mein. He translated into Arabic works by Muhammad Zakariya Kandhlawi, Amin Ahsan Islahi, Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Muhammad Manzoor Nomani and Muhammad Shafi Usmani. His contribution to Arabic journalism has been the subject of PhD theses at Gauhati University and elsewhere.

President's award (Certificate of Honour) for Arabic language and literature, Government of India, 1994. Lifetime Award, Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, 15 February 2013. Honorary DLitt, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Language University, Lucknow, November 2019. Lifetime Achievement Award, All India Muslim Personal Law Board, May 2026, presented at a Tafheem-e-Shariat workshop at Nadwa. Lifetime Achievement Award, Jamea tul Hidaya, Jaipur, 2026.

Tributes described him as the last of a generation of Nadwa scholars who connected Indian Islamic scholarship with the Arab world. Through nearly half a century editing Al-Ba'th al-Islami, decades of Arabic teaching and a quarter century as Mohtamim, he shaped thousands of students across South Asia and beyond. Akhilesh Yadav said people like him were rare and that his generation was passing away. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, the Institute of Objective Studies, the Indian National Congress in Uttar Pradesh and many scholars issued condolences.

He had been unwell for some time and died in Lucknow on Wednesday 7 October 2026, aged 92; the hospital confirmed his death, according to Awaz The Voice. A specific cause was not made public. Leaders including Akhilesh Yadav visited Nadwa to pay respects. The funeral prayer was held on the Nadwa grounds at 8 am on Thursday 8 October, led by Nazim Maulana Syed Bilal Hasani Nadwi and attended by thousands, and he was buried at the Daliganj cemetery in Lucknow.