ʻAlī Ṭanṭāwī

ʻAlī Ṭanṭāwī studied at Damascus University and Maktab Anbar. Training under ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Sallām, Darwish al-Qassas and Muhammad Salim al-Jundi is recorded. Muḥammad ibn Luṭfī Ṣabbāgh, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Bānī and Aḥmad Dhū alghiná are recorded as having studied under ʻAlī Ṭanṭāwī. The recorded working language is Arabic. Works named in the authority record are Dhikrayāt ʻAlī al-Ṭanṭāwī. Distinctions recorded are King Faisal Prize in Service to Islam.

• Native Name — محمد علي الطنطاوي • Religion — Islam • Birth Name — محمد علي مصطفى الطنطاوي • Born — 12 June 1909 • Birthplace — Damascus, Ottoman Empire Ottoman Syria • Died — 18 June 1999 • Place of death — Jeddah, Saudi Arabia • Movement — Salafiyya

Al-Tantawi was born in Damascus in 1909, into a family of religious scholars: his paternal grandfather, who moved from Egypt, was a graduate of al-Azhar who specialized in astronomy, his father was an Islamic scholar as well and so was his maternal uncle, Sheikh Muhibb ad-Deen al-Khatib. Aftar attending the prestigious Maktab Anbar, al-Tantawi would then study Islamic law at the University of Damascus, and would militate against the French occupation of Syria and the Zionist project in Palestine, one of the first Islamic scholars putting his attention to this issue. He would later become a symbol of dissent and resistance against the rule of Hafez al-Assad during the 1970s. Al-Tantawi wrote in many Arab newspapers throughout the years, most importantly of which was Egyptian magazine Arrissalah from 1933 to 1953. His daughter, Banan al-Tantawi, was shot dead at her home in Aachen by a death squad sent by the Assad regime on 17 March 1981. Being unable to resume his Islamic activism as he wished, he moved to Saudi Arabia in the late 1960s where he spent the last decades of his life. He died in 1999 and was buried in Jeddah.