Mustafa al-Maraghi
Rector of Al-Azhar
Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi (Arabic: محمد مصطفى المراغي; 5 March 1881 – 22 August 1945) was an Egyptian reformer and rector of Al-Azhar from El Maragha, Sohag Governorate.
Al-Maraghi was active in encouraging reforms within legal and social contexts as well as within education where he notably campaigned for the introduction of modern sciences to the curriculum. He was a proponent of ijtihad—a process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah—and the integration of the separate schools of law. He was active on an international level with regard to religious conferences and was also open about his wish to see clergy take a more prominent role in government.
In the 1918 Birthday Honours, he was made an Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire as Grand Qadi of the Sudan.
In March 1924 al-Jizawi formed the Greater Committee for Religious Knowledge in direct response to the collapse of the Caliphate and the issue of preaching in such an environment. Al-Maraghi was included as a member.
Al-Maraghi met the English translator Marmaduke Pickthall, who wished his translation of the Qur'an authorized by the Al-Azhar University.
“Mustafa al-Maraghi” enters the record as rector of Al-Azhar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mustafa, al-Maraghi and Rector can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4120117. VIAF identifies the subject as 80773262. The Library of Congress control number is nr92033182. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1881, 1945, 1918 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mustafa al-Maraghi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.