Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Arabic: أبو محمد المقدسي ) or more fully Abu Muhammad Asem al-Maqdisi ( أبو محمد عصام المقدسي ) is the assumed name of Isam Mohammad Tahir al-Barqawi ( عصام محمد طاهر البرقاوي ), a Jordanian-Palestinian Islamic scholar and jihadist writer. He is best known as the spiritual mentor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, until the latter's death in 2006. But his writings have a wider following; a studyhttp://ctc.usma.edu/atlas/Atlas-ExecutiveReport.pdf USMA Militant Ideology Atlas, summary at the United States Military Academy concluded that Maqdisi "is the most influential living Jihadi Theorist" and that "by all measures, Maqdisi is the key contemporary ideologue in the Jihadi intellectual universe".