Muhammad Yunus Jaunpuri

Muḥammad Yūnus Jaunpūrī (1937–2017) was an Islamic scholar, muhaddith and leading cleric of the Deobandi movement. He was a student and close disciple of Zakariyya Kandhlawi, a fellow Deobandi cleric and a prominent leader of the Tablighi Jamaat. Jaunpuri was also a senior professor of hadith at the Mazahir Uloom in Saharanpur, authoring works on the subject of hadith such as Nibrās al-Sārī.

Biography Muhammad Yunus bin Shabbir Ahmad al-Jaunpuri was born in the city of Jaunpur on 2 October 1937. Graduating from the Deobandi institution of Mazahir Uloom in 1961, he later became a student of leading Deobandi cleric and Tablighi Jamaat preacher, Zakariyya Kandhlawi. Due to his knowledge in the field of hadith sciences, Jaunpuri became a muhaddith and was appointed as the chief professor of hadith studies at the Mazahir Uloom and given the status of a leading cleric within the Deobandi movement. Like majority of the Deobandis, Jaunpuri adhered to the Hanafi school and was a supporter of Sufism, but unlike most Deobandis, he adhered to the Athari school of theology, instead of Maturidism.

Yunus Jaunpuri died on 11 July 2017 in Saharanpur. Over a million people, including his students, attended the funeral procession. It was led by Talha Kandhlawi, a son of Zakariyya Kandhlawi. Likewise, Fuzail Ahmad Nasiri, a Deobandi scholar and poet, expressed his grief and eulogized Jaunpuri, saying that he was an exemplary scholar in the field of hadith. While writing the commentary, Jaunpuri includes footnotes from prominent Islamic khalaf such as Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Taymiyyah, Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi, and 'Abd al-Hayy al-Laknawi, with the aim of quoting prominent scholars that are not restricted to the Hanafi school, as Jaunpuri intended for his work to reach an audience outside of Hanafi adherents. Al-Yawāqīt al-Ghāliyah al-Aḥādīth al-‘Āliyah (The Precious Rubies of the Lofty Prophetic Traditions) a work in four volumes which is a compilation of lectures, essays and treatises written by Jaunpuri regarding the study of hadith and narrations from the Islamic prophet Muhammad.