Harald Motzki

Harald Motzki was born on August 25, 1948 in West Berlin, he grew up in a Catholic family as the son of Guenther and Brunhilde Motzki. Harald Motzki began his university studies focusing on comparative religion, Islamic studies, Old and New Testament studies, European history, Arabic, and Semitic languages. He received his doctorate in Islamic Studies in 1978 from the University of Bonn. He wrote on the transmission of hadith and was a professor of Islamic Studies at Nijmegen University (Radboud Universitet Nijmegen) in the Netherlands.

Motzki had been called by fellow scholar of Islam, Christopher Melchert, "the undisputed dean of hadith studies".

Motzki died on February 8, 2019.