Abdul Khaliq Sambhali was born on 4 January 1950 in Sambhal.[1] He was schooled at the Madrasa Khair al-Madaris and Madrasa Shamsul Uloom in Sambhal. He memorized the Quran under the tutelage of Hafiz Farīduddīn.[2] He went to Darul Uloom Deoband in 1968,[1] and graduated in the Dars-e-Nizami course in 1972. He specialized in Arabic literature in 1973. His teachers included Syed Fakhruddin Ahmad, Muhammad Tayyib Qasmi, Mahmud Hasan Gangohi and Naseer Ahmad Khan.[2]
Sambhali began teaching the Islamic sciences at Madrasa Khadim al-Islam in Hapur in 1973, and then taught at the Madrasa Jami' al-Huda in Moradabad during 1979. He was appointed a teacher at the Darul Uloom Deoband in 1982.[1] In 2008, he was appointed the vice-rector of the seminary. He was a litterateur of Arabic and Urdu, and taught books of hadith such as the Sunan ibn Majah at the Deoband seminary.[4][5] He also gave discourses on the Poems of Al-Mutanabbi, the Dīwan-e-Mutanabbi, which was considered famous in the seminary.[5] His students included Mohammad Najeeb Qasmi.[6]
In an interview that Sambhali gave to the Deccan Herald in May 2009, he was reported saying that, "We are not against education of girls, but we are against co-education." He was asked about the Taliban closing the schools of girls.[7] In 2017, he said about the Indian government's ban on Triple Talaq that, "no one had a right to change the commandments of Shariah."[8] He translated Abdul Majeed al-Zindani's book Al-Tawḥīd (transl. Monotheism) into Urdu. His discourses on the criticism of Maududism have been published from the Deoband seminary in several volumes.
Sambhali died on 30 July 2021 in Muzaffarnagar.[6] He was buried in the Qasmi cemetery in Deoband.[4] Abul Qasim Nomani, Arshad Madani, Mahmood Madani and Muhammad Sufyan Qasmi expressed grief over his death.[9]
