Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Sudais has been president, at ministerial rank, of the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques since May 2012.
At a recent press conference, he announced the launch of one of the biggest ever Ramadan operations at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, pointing out that despite the gradual easing of COVID-19 precautionary measures, health and safety practices would continue to be applied at the same levels as during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Al-Sudais, a Grand Mosque imam and prominent Islamic scholar known for his melodious Qur’an recitations that have inspired Muslims around the world, was born in 1962 in Riyadh, where he joined Al-Mothana bin Haritha Elementary School.
He also attended Riyadh Scientific Institute, graduating from there with excellence in 1979. Four years later, he gained a bachelor’s degree from the Riyadh-based College of Shariah, where he was also appointed a lecturer in the department of the fundamentals of Islamic jurisprudence.
In 1988, he obtained a with-excellence master’s degree in Islamic jurisprudence from the college at the Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University, and then a Ph.D. with excellence from Makkah’s Umm Al-Qura University. In 1996, he was promoted to assistant professor at the university’s college of Shariah.
In 2004, Al-Sudais became an associate professor and member of the teaching staff in Umm Al-Qura University’s higher Shariah studies department. Five years later, he was made professor of Islamic jurisprudence at the same university.
Al-Sudais, who had memorized the whole of the Qur’an by the age of 12, is an expert in both the Hafs bin Asim method of reading the Qur’an and the “Six Books,” that contain Prophetic Hadith and acts compiled by six Muslim scholars.
A year after his graduation from the College of Shariah, he was appointed an imam at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, beginning his new duty by leading the Asr prayer eight days before Ramadan. On June 15, 1984, he delivered his first Friday sermon at the Grand Mosque.
