Muhammad Ayyub

Muhammad Ayyub (1952–2016) was a Saudi reciter and scholar of Rohingya origin, imam of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina from 1990 to 1997 and again for the Ramadan prayers of 2015, and a member of the tafsir faculty at the Islamic University of Madinah. ¹²

He was born in Mecca in 1952 (1372 AH) to a family from Arakan in Burma whose men were scholars; his father had fled persecution there and worked in Mecca's scribes' market. He memorised the Qur'an in 1965 under Khalil al-Qari and took a doctorate in tafsir from the Islamic University of Madinah, where he taught in the College of the Qur'an and was repeatedly deputed to teach in Pakistan. ²¹

In 1990 he was appointed imam of the Prophet's Mosque, leading there until 1997 and recording the mosque's first complete recitation for its radio station; he returned to lead the Ramadan Tarawih and Tahajjud prayers in 2015. ¹²

He died in Medina on 16 April 2016 (9 Rajab 1437); the funeral prayer was held at the Prophet's Mosque and he was buried in al-Baqi cemetery. ¹²³