Raşit Küçük

Raşit Küçük was born in 1947 in Menteşbey, a village of the Akseki district of Antalya. He studied at Antalya Imam-Hatip School and Konya Higher Islamic Institute. He completed the academic studies he had begun in Erzurum at Marmara University Institute of Social Sciences, preparing his doctoral dissertation on the concept of love in the Qur’an and the Sunna.

After teaching and serving as an administrator at Erzurum Imam-Hatip School, he worked in the fields of hadith and Islamic ethics at Erzurum Higher Islamic Institute. In 1981 he moved to Istanbul Higher Islamic Institute; after this institution became Marmara University Faculty of Theology, he worked for many years as a faculty member there. Between 2007 and 2011 he served as dean of Marmara University Faculty of Theology.

Known for his studies in hadith and sira, Raşit Küçük became one of the important figures in theological education and academic religious research in Turkey. He wrote articles for the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam in the fields of hadith, fiqh, Islamic history, Sufism and tafsir. Through textbooks, original works and collaborative studies, especially his translation and commentary of Riyâzü’s-Sâlihîn, he reached a wide readership.

Between 2011 and 2014 he served as president of the High Council of Religious Affairs of the Presidency of Religious Affairs. He then became president of the Islamic Research Centre of the Turkish Religious Foundation and held this office until 2022. His work at İSAM is remembered especially through his institutional services around the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam and academic publishing.

Raşit Küçük died in Istanbul on 22 November 2022. His funeral prayer was held at Fatih Mosque, and he was then buried in the Fatih Mosque Cemetery.