Muhammad Ayyub ibn Muhammad Yusuf al-Arakani
Muhammad Ayyub ibn Muhammad Yusuf al-Arakani (October 1952 – 16 April 2016) was a Saudi Qurʾān reciter, imam, and Islamic scholar of Rohingya origin. He is best known for his service as an imam of Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina from 1990 to 1997 and again in 2015 to lead Tarāwīḥ prayers during Ramadan. He also served as an imam of Masjid Quba and worked as a faculty member in the Department of Tafsīr at the Islamic University of Madinah. Additionally, he was a member of the Scholarly Committee of the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qurʾān.
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Ayyub was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to a Rohingya family originally from Arakan, a coastal region in present-day Rakhine State, Myanmar. His grandfather, Sulayman Umar, was a farmer in Arakan, and his father, Muhammad Yusuf, fled to Saudi Arabia via Bangladesh following detention by Burmese authorities amid Rohingya persecution. As the eldest child, Ayyub contributed to the family’s livelihood from an early age. He followed the Ḥanafī school of Islamic jurisprudence.
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He completed the memorization of the Qurʾān in 1965 under the guidance of Khalil bin Abd al-Rahman al-Qari in Mecca. After completing his primary education in 1966, he moved to Medina and graduated from an Islamic school in 1972. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Sharia at the Islamic University of Madinah, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1976. He specialized in Tafsīr and ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, earning a master’s degree with a thesis titled: “Saʿīd ibn Jubayr and His Narrations in Tafsīr from the Beginning of the Qurʾān to the End of Surah At-Tawbah.” He completed his doctoral dissertation in 1987/1988, titled: “The Narrations of Saʿīd ibn Jubayr in Tafsīr from the Beginning of Surah Yūnus to the End of the Qurʾān.” He also studied under several scholars in Medina in tafsīr, fiqh, hadith, and uṣūl al-fiqh, including Shaykhs Abdul Aziz Muhammad Uthman, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Akram Dia’a Al-Umari, Muhammad al-Amin al-Shanqiti, Abdul Muhsin Al-Abbad, Abdullah Muhammad al-Ghunayman, and Abu Bakr al-Jaza’iri.
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Ayyub was appointed imam of Masjid an-Nabawi in 1990 and served until 1997. He later served as imam at Masjid Quba and other mosques in Medina. In 2015, he returned to Masjid an-Nabawi to lead Tarāwīḥ prayers during Ramadan. Around 2008, he visited his ancestral village in Arakan, a trip facilitated by the Bangladeshi embassy.
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Muhammad Ayyub passed away on 16 April 2016. His funeral prayer was held at Masjid an-Nabawi after Zuhr prayer, and he was buried in Al-Baqi Cemetery, Medina.
