Muhammad Ayyub

Early life and family Ayyub was born in October 1952 to a Rohingya family in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. His grandfather, Sulayman Umar, had been a farmer in a village in Arakan, a coastal region along the Bay of Bengal which was incorporated into the Union of Burma in 1948. In the following year, Ayyub’s father, Muhammad Yusuf, was detained by Burmese authorities amid Rohingya persecution in the region. Yusuf subsequently fled to Saudi Arabia via Bangladesh. As the eldest child, Ayyub assumed responsibility for contributing to the family’s livelihood from an early age.

Ayyub followed the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence.

Education Muhammad Ayyub completed the memorization of the Quran in 1965 under the guidance of Khalil bin Abd al-Rahman al-Qari in Mecca. During this period he became acquainted with Ali Abdullah Jaber. After finishing his primary education in 1966 , he moved to Medina and continued his studies at an Islamic school, from which he graduated in 1972 .

He later enrolled in the Faculty of Sharia at the Islamic University of Madinah, and received a bachelor's degree in 1976 . He then specialized in Tafsir (Quranic exegesis) and `Ulum al-Qur'an (sciences of the Quran), earning a master's degree from the Faculty of the Holy Qur'an and Islamic Studies. His thesis was titled: “Sa'id ibn Jubayr and His Narrations in Tafsir from the Beginning of the Qur’an to the End of Surah At-Tawbah.” He completed his doctorate at the same faculty in either 1987 or 1988 . His doctoral dissertation was titled: “The Narrations of Sa‘id ibn Jubayr in Tafsir from the Beginning of Surah Yunus to the End of the Qur’an.”. He subsequently served as an Imam at Masjid Quba and other mosques in Medina. In 2015 , he was reappointed as an Imam of Masjid an-Nabawi to lead the Tarawih prayers during Ramadan.

In , the Embassy of Bangladesh facilitated Ayyub's visit to and week-long stay in his ancestral village in Arakan.

Death Muhammad Ayyub died on 16 April 2016.