by Ibrahim Moiz
The Muslim world mourned this week the loss of senior scholar and instructor, Shaykh Dr.Umar bin Hassan Fallatah. This Maliki scholar of Nigerian Fulani descent, who specialized in hadith, met his end at his birthplace Madinah, where he had been teaching at the Prophet’s Mosque for over forty years.
The death of a scholar is always a particular loss for the Muslim world, because it also deprives us of his particular knowledge and wisdom. A well-known hadith relayed by Abdullah b. Amr quotes the Prophet, may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him, as saying,
“Truly, Allah does not withhold knowledge by snatching it away from his servants, but rather he withholds knowledge by taking the souls of scholars, until no scholar remains and people follow ignorant leaders. They are asked and they issue judgments without knowledge. Thus, they are astray and lead others astray.” [Sahih al-Bukhari 100, Sahih Muslim 2673]
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Shaykh Dr.Umar bin Hassan Fallatah
We are fortunate to have a recently published biography of the scholar from the Telegram account KnowledgeNomad, who attended his lectures last year and gained this information first-hand from the shaykh himself. Shaykh Umar Hassan Usman Fallata was born in Medinah, where his grandfather had settled from West Africa to an ethnically Fulani family in the summer of 1364/1945. The aspiring historian FikralJabarti notes that Shaikh Fallata’s ancestors were Ottoman soldiers before their settlement in Medinah. He received his primary schooling in Medinah and his higher education, with distinction, at Makkah as well as Cairo’s esteemed Azhar University. In the 1980s he briefly studied English at Los Angeles before returning to teach at the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah.
Shaykh Umar Usman’s positions included Head of the Shariah Department at the College of Shariah and Islamic Studies in Makkah, as well as Head of the Arabic Language and Islamic Studies Department at King Abdul-Aziz University’s Madinah campus, where he was promoted to dean. He was known to specialize in Hadith and Tafsir, adhering to the Maliki jurisprudential school. Often known simply as Umar Fallata, he is not to be confused with an older namesake, Umar Muhammad Bakar Fallata, another senior scholar who passed away in 1999.
The Muslim world is thus bereaved of a seasoned and well-respected scholar. It is no small consolation that it was in the month of Ramadan that he returned to Allah .
Related:
– Shaykha Munira bint Hamdi Qubaisi [1933-2022]: Pioneering Mujaddida, Learned Scholar, And Beloved Mentor – An Obituary
– Imam Asim Abdur-Rashid: An Obituary