Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson was born in Walla Walla, Washington, and grew up in Northern California.

Shaykh Hamza embraced Islam in 1977 in Santa Barbara, California, when he was still a teenager and set off almost immediately to study Arabic, Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, and spiritual psychology with masters in the Muslim world. He first studied for four years in the United Arab Emirates and then moved to Madina, followed by Algeria, Morocco, and then finally to a unique madrassa in the Saharan desert of West Africa to study with the remarkable scholar Shaykh Murabit Al-Hajj.
After ten-years of studies abroad, he returned to the United States and completed degrees in nursing at Imperial Valley College and religious studies at San Jose State University.

He has traveled all over the world giving talks on Islam. He also founded Zaytuna Institute which has established an international reputation for presenting a classical picture of Islam in the West and which is dedicated to the revival of traditional study methods and the sciences of Islam. Shaykh Hamza is the first American lecturer to teach in Morocco's prestigious and oldest University, the Karaouine in Fes. In addition, he has translated into modern English several classical Arabic traditional texts and poems, including The Muslim Creed by Imam al-Tahawi and more recently Ibn Ashir’s The Helping Guide. Shaykh Hamza currently resides in Northern California with his wife and five children.

(For more information on Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson and the Zaytuna Institute please visit www.zaytuna.org)