Muqbil al-Wadi'i

Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi'i (c. 1933 – 21 July 2001) was a Yemeni-born Islamic scholar. He was the founder of the Dar al-Hadith al-Khayriyya, a madrasa in the northern town of Dammaj which became one of the main centres for the Salafi ideology in the country.

Born in northern Yemen to a Zaydi Shia family, al-Wadi'i converted to Sunni Islam in his young age. He travelled to Saudi Arabia where he studied Islam under renowned Salafi scholars such as Ibn Baz, Ibn Humayd, Hammad al-Ansari, Muhammad al-Sumali, Abd al-Aziz al-Najdi and several others. In December 1979, al-Wadi'i was arrested by Saudi authorities after having been falsely accused of involvement in the seizure of the Grand Mosque by Juhayman al-Utaybi and his supporters. Upon the insistence of Ibn Baz, al-Wadi'i was released a few months and deported to Yemen where he began propagating Wahhabism and laid foundation to the Dar al-Hadith al-Khayriyya in 1980.