Sheikh Nuh Keller is an American-Muslim master of Islamic spirituality, specialist in Islamic Law, and translator. Born in 1954 in the north-western United States, he was educated in philosophy and Arabic at the University of Chicago and UCLA. He became Muslim in 1977 at al-Azhar in Cairo, and later studied the traditional Islamic Sciences of spirituality, hadith, Shafiî and Hanafi jurisprudence, legal methodology (usul al-fiqh), and tenets of faith (`aqidah) in Syria and Jordan, where he has lived since 1980.
His English translation of `Umdat al-Salik, or The Reliance of the Traveler [Sunna Books, 1991] is the first Islamic legal work in a European language to receive the certification of al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest institution of higher learning. He also possesses ijazas or "certificates of authorization" in Islamic jurisprudence and spirituality from sheikhs in Syria and Jordan.
Sheikh Nuh's other translations and works
include: Al-Maqasid: Imam Nawawi's Manual of
Islam; The Sunni Path: A Handbook of
Islamic Belief; and the Tariqa Notes,
a handbook for those on the Shadhili path of
tasawwuf. He is currently translating Imam
Nawawi's Kitab al-Adhkar, or The
Book of Remembrance of Allah
, a compendium
of some 1227 hadiths on prayers and Dhikrs of
the prophetic sunna. He currently resides with
his wife in Amman, Jordan.