أبو زهرة، محمد

Conservative Egyptian public intellectual, scholar of Islamic law, and author. Educated at the Ahmadi Madrasa, the Madrasa al-Qada al-Shari, and the Dar al-Ulum, he taught at al-Azhar's faculty of theology and later, as professor of Islamic law, at Cairo University. He also served as a member of al-Azhar's Academy of Islamic Research. His more than forty books include biographies of Abu Hanifah , Malik , Shafii , Ibn Hanbal , Zayd ibn Ali , Jafar al-Sadiq , Ibn Hazm , and Ibn Taymiyyah , as well as works on personal status, pious endowments (waqf), property, and crime and punishment in Islamic law.