Muḥammad ʿAbduh (also spelled Mohammed Abduh; Arabic: محمد عبده; 1849 – 11 July 1905) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar, judge, and Grand Mufti of Egypt. He was a central figure of the Arab Nahḍa and Islamic Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He began teaching advanced students esoteric Islamic texts at Al-Azhar University while he was still studying there. From 1877, with the status of ʿālim, he taught logic, theology, ethics, and politics. He was also made a professor of history at Dar al-ʿUlūm the following year, and of Arabic language and literature at Madrasat al-Alsun. ʿAbduh was a champion of the press and wrote prolifically in Al-Manār and Al-Ahram. He was made editor of Al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya in 1880. He also authored Risālat at-Tawḥīd (Arabic: رسالة التوحيد; "The Theology of Unity") and a commentary on the Quran. He briefly published the pan-Islamist anti-colonial newspaper al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqā alongside his teacher and mentor Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī.

ʿAbduh joined Freemasonry and subscribed to various Masonic lodges alongside his mentor al-Afghānī and his other pupils, but eventually left the secret society in his later years. He was appointed as a judge in the Courts of First Instance of the Native Tribunals in 1888, a consultative member of the Court of Appeal in 1899, and he was appointed Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah in 1899.

Muḥammad ʿAbduh was born in 1849 to a father with Turkish ancestry and an Egyptian mother in the Nile Delta. His family was part of the Ottoman Egyptian elite: his father was part of the Umad, or the local ruling elite, while his mother was part of the Ashraf. He was educated in Tanta at a private school. When he turned thirteen, he was sent to the Aḥmadī mosque, which was one of the largest educational institutions in Egypt. A while later, ʿAbduh ran away from school and got married. After a brief period following his marriage, ʿAbduh returned to his school in Tanta. During this period, ʿAbduh studied under the tutelage of his Sufi Muslim uncle Dārwīsh, who was a member of the revivalist and reformist Madaniyya Tarîqâh, a popular branch of the Shadhiliyya order, spread across Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Apart from spiritual exercises, the order also emphasised proper practice of Islam, shunning taqlid and stressing adherence to foundational teachings. Under the tutelage of his uncle, ʿAbduh began to practice the litany of the Madaniyya. Like many of his fellow students in Tanta, the experience would transform ʿAbduh towards Sufi asceticism with mystical orientations. Abduh would inherit many of his subsequent public views, such as firm opposition to taqlid from his Sufi uncle.

ʿAbduh suffered from acute spiritual crises in his youth, similar to those experienced by the medieval Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic al-Ghazali. He was heavily dissatisfied with the traditional education and representatives of mainstream ulama of his time. Under the influence of Shaykh Dārwīsh al-Khadīr, Tasawwuf provided an alternative form of religiosity which would profoundly shape ʿAbduh's spiritual and intellectual formation. As ʿAbduh would subsequently emerge as a towering scholarly intellectual in Egypt, he concurrently assumed his role as a traditional Sufi Muslim. Tasawwuf as taught to ʿAbduh by Shaykh Dārwīsh transcended the perceived limitations and superficialities of traditional Islamic learning, and was based on an Islamic religiosity led by an intellectual, charismatic authority. For ʿAbduh, Shaykh Dārwīsh and his teachings represented orthodox Sufism, which was different from the Sufi folklore and the charlatans prevalent in rural Egypt during the early modern era. Explaining his conversion to Sufism under the training of Shaykh Dārwīsh, 'Abduh wrote:

"On the seventh day, I asked the shaykh: What is your tarîqâh? He replied: Islam is my tarıqa. I asked: But are not all these people Muslims? He said: If they were Muslims, you would not see them contending over trivial matters and would not hear them swearing by God while they are lying with or without a reason. These words were like fire which burned away all that I held dear of the baggage from the past."

In 1866, ʿAbduh enrolled at al-Azhar University in Cairo, where he studied logic, Islamic philosophy, theology, and Sufism. He was a student of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, a Muslim philosopher and religious reformer who advocated Pan-Islamism to resist European colonialism. During his studies in al-Azhar, ʿAbduh had continued to express his critiques of the traditional curriculum and traditional modes of repetition. For him, al-Afghānī combined personal charisma with a fresh intellectual approach which the ulama of al-Azhar couldn't provide. As a young 22 year-old Sufi mystic seeking a charismatic guide and alternative modes of learning and religiosity, ʿAbduh chose al-Afghānī as his murshid. Their murid–murshid relationship would last for eight years and al-Afghānī was able to meet the expectations of his young disciple. Under al-Afghani's influence, ʿAbduh combined journalism, politics, and his own fascination with Islamic mystical spirituality. Al-Afghānī enriched ʿAbduh's mysticism with a philosophical underpinning and thereby drew him to a rationalist interpretations of Islam. Al-Afghānī's lessons merged his Sufi mysticism with the esoteric and theosophic tradition of Persian Shīʿīsm. He also taught ʿAbduh about the problems of Egypt and the Islamic world, and about the technological achievements of the Western civilization.

In 1877, ʿAbduh was granted the degree of ʿālim ("teacher") and he started to teach logic, Islamic theology, and ethics at al-Azhar University. In 1878, he was appointed professor of history at Cairo's teachers' training college Dar al-ʿUlūm, later incorporated into Cairo University. He was also appointed to teach Arabic at the Khedivial School of Languages. He is regarded as one of the key founding figures of Islamic Modernism, sometimes called "Neo-Muʿtazilism" after the homonymous medieval school of Islamic theology based on rationalism. ʿAbduh was also appointed editor-in-chief of al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya, the official newspaper of Egypt. He was dedicated to reforming all aspects of Egyptian society and believed that education was the best way to achieve this goal. He was in favor of a good religious education, which would strengthen a child's morals, and a scientific education, which would nurture a child's ability to reason. In his articles he criticized corruption, superstition, and the luxurious lives of the rich.