Cairo/Riyadh - The head of al-Azhar, Egypt's leading religious authority and one of its largest universities, has died following a heart attack in Saudi Arabia, media reports said Wednesday. Egypt's state TV reported that Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi died during a visit to Riyadh.
Tantawi, who was 82, was appointed Grand Mufti of
Egypt in 1986. He held this position for almost ten years, until he was appointed Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Mosque and University in 1996.
Al-Azhar, a millennium-old
university and mosque complex, is widely regarded as one of the main seats of Islamic learning and the most prominent Sunni institutions in the world.
Last year, Tantawi stirred controversy when he banned students wearing full-face veils, or niqab, from entering female-only classrooms and dormitories in al-Azhar university.
