Zakariyya Kandhlawi was a mid-twentieth-century traditionalist Sunni scholar and an authority in the study of hadith, also known as Sheikh al-Hadith, hailing from India. He was an influential member and ideologist of Tablighi Jamaat and the author of the Fada'il series, which is a crucial propagation literature for the movement. Born into a family deeply rooted in Tablighi Jamaat and associated with the Deobandi movement, he studied under Mazahir Uloom and eventually became a teacher there in 1917, retiring over half a century later in 1968. Engaging with Sufism, a distinctive feature of the mainstream Indian Ulama, he was a student of Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri in both hadith and spirituality. Together, they embarked on a ten-year journey to compile Badhl al-Majhud, an explanatory work on Sunan Abu Dawood. Initially published in five volumes, he expanded it to a twenty-volume collection. He made his first trip to Medina with Saharanpuri at a young age, and in 1972, he settled in Medina and continued his missionary work from there until his death. He was buried next to his teacher Saharanpuri at Al-Baqi Cemetery, whose successor he had been named. During his initial stay in Medina, he began working on a commentary on Muwatta Imam Malik, eventually publishing Awjaz al-Masalik over a thirty-year period. This work quickly earned him a reputation for his expertise in interpreting the Maliki tradition. The first edition, published in six volumes in India, was followed by a fifteen-volume second edition, with the first three volumes printed in Cairo and the remaining volumes in Beirut.

The Deobandi movement or Deobandism is a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam that adheres to the Hanafi school of law. It formed in the late 19th century around the Darul Uloom Madrassa in Deoband, India, from which the name derives, by Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, and several others, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58. They opposed influence of non-Muslim cultures on the Muslim of South Asia. The movement pioneered education in religious sciences through the Dars-i-Nizami associated with the Lucknow-based ulama of Firangi Mahal with the goal of preserving traditional Islamic teachings from the influx of modernist, secular ideas during British colonial rule. The Deobandi movement's Indian clerical wing, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, was founded in 1919 and played a major role in the Indian independence movement through its participation in the Pan-Islamist Khilafat movement and propagation of the doctrine of composite nationalism.