Imam al-Nawawī
أبو زكريا يحيى بن شرف النووي
Muḥyī al-Dīn (Reviver of the Religion)
Abū Zakariyyā Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī
- Birthplace
- Nawā, Syria
- Madhhab
- Shāfiʿī in fiqh, Ashʿarī in ʿaqīdah
- Reference
- Wikipedia ↗
The Forty Hadith, Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn, and the most widely read commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — all produced in a life that lasted barely forty-four years.
al-Nawawī lived a life of astonishing discipline. He studied in Damascus from dawn to midnight — eighteen disciplines a day — took a single meal each evening, wrote standing up to avoid falling asleep. He refused every offered post of leadership. He never married. He died at forty-four, in Nawā, leaving a body of work that took later scholars centuries to catch up with.
The Forty Hadith — which is actually forty-two — became the universal entry point into the hadith sciences. Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn organised nearly two thousand authenticated hadith by the virtue they cultivated, and is still one of the most commonly recited books in Sunni Islam. His commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the Sharḥ, remains the working reference for scholars of that collection.
- Al-Arbaʿīn al-Nawawiyyah (The Forty Hadith)
- Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn (Gardens of the Righteous)
- Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (Commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim)
- Al-Adhkār (The Remembrances)
- Al-Majmūʿ (fiqh)
No serious Muslim library — classical or modern — is without al-Nawawī on the shelf. The Forty Hadith remains, seven centuries on, the first hadith collection most students ever memorise.