Zaghloul El-naggar

Training as a geologist

Born on 17 November 1933 in Mishal, in the Basyoun district of Gharbia Governorate, he learned the Quran as a child. He graduated in geology with honours from Cairo University's Faculty of Science in 1955 and earned a PhD in earth sciences from the University of Wales in 1963, with a thesis on the geology and stratigraphic palaeontology of the Esna–Idfu region of the Nile Valley. He became a full professor in 1972.

Academic career

His posts included Ain Shams University in Cairo, King Saud University in Riyadh (1959–1967), Kuwait University (1967–1978), Qatar University and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, where he was professor of geology (1978–1996). He was also a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1977–1978. He was elected a Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Sciences in 1988 and was a member of the Geological Society of Egypt and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

"Scientific miracles" of the Quran

From 2001 he chaired the committee on scientific miracles of the Quran at Egypt's Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Cairo, and he was a founding member of the International Commission on Scientific Signs in the Quran and Sunnah. For years he wrote a weekly column in Al-Ahram, "Min Asrar al-Qur'an" (Secrets of the Quran), lectured in many countries and appeared on television, including on Iqraa. He wrote some 45 books in Arabic, English and French, among them The Geological Concept of Mountains in the Qur'an (2003). Some of his claims, such as those on the "splitting of the Moon" or the medicinal value of camel urine, drew strong criticism.

Honours and death

His distinctions included the Baraka Prize for Earth Sciences (1955) and Sudan's gold medal for sciences, letters and arts (2005). He died in Amman, Jordan, on 9 November 2025, aged 91.