Mohamed Khair al-Shaal

Muhammad Khayr ibn Muhyi al-Din al-Sha'al (born 1970) is a Syrian dentist, preacher and writer from Damascus. He combines a private dental practice with Friday preaching in Damascus mosques, religious teaching and television and radio presenting, and his many books — some in their tenth edition — have been distributed in very large numbers. ^{1 2}

Al-Shaal was born in the al-Salihiyya district of Damascus in 1970. At school in Damascus he earned three secondary certificates — scientific (1986), religious (1987) and literary (1990) — then graduated in dentistry in 1992 among the top ten of his class. He joined the College of Usul al-Din at Omdurman Islamic University, graduating first in his class in 1998, took a postgraduate diploma in hadith and Sunna in 1999 and a master's in Sunna and hadith sciences in 2002, and completed his doctorate in 2009 with a thesis giving an isnad study of the asbab al-nuzul reports of Surat al-Baqara. ¹

Al-Shaal received ijazas in the Six Books and in Malik's Muwatta from Iqbal Ahmad al-A'zami al-Ansari and Rafiq Ahmad al-Pakistani, and ijazas in the narrations and books of his hadith teacher Nur al-Din Itr; he read part of the Qur'an under Adnan Ghurra and studied the sciences of preaching and education under his teacher Ahmed Kuftaro. ¹

Al-Shaal taught at the College of Islamic Preaching (Damascus branch) and at Omdurman Islamic University's College of Usul al-Din (Damascus branch) from 2000 to 2011, and then lectured at the Levant Higher Institute for Sharia, Arabic and Islamic studies in its colleges of Sharia and law, Islamic economics and usul al-din. He preaches on Fridays in a number of Damascus mosques, prepares and presents recorded and live television and radio programmes, and practises dentistry at his own clinic. ¹

His books include Lamahat fi A'lam al-Muhaddithin wa Manahijihim fi'l-Kutub al-Sitta, al-Tawjihat al-Nabawiyya li'l-Ta'amul ma'a'l-Qur'an al-Karim, Kayfa Tusbih Waliyyan, al-Usra wa'l-Tarbiya, Qadaya al-Shabab, al-Dawra al-Ta'hiliyya li'l-Hayat al-Zawjiyya and the four-volume Kitab al-Khutab al-Minbariyya al-Masmu'a, together with series on social chastity, the life of hearts, and thought and spirit; more than a million copies of some of his books have been distributed. ¹