Al-Imam Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi

Al-Imām Muhy al-Dīn Abū Zakariyyā Yahyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī (1234–1278) (Arabic: أبو زكريا يحيى بن شرف النووي‎), popularly known as al-Nawawi, an-Nawawi or Imam Nawawi (631 – 676 A.H. / 1234 – 1278 CE), was a Sunni Muslim author on Fiqh and hadith. His position on legal matters is considered the authoritative one in the Shafi'i Madhhab. As with many Arabic and Semitic names, the last part of his name refers to his hometown.

An-Nawawi was born in the village of Nawa on the Horan Plain of southern Syria in 631 H. He was the imām of the later Shāfiʿī School, the scholar of his time in knowledge, piety, and abstinence, a hadīth master (hāfiẓ), biographer, lexicologist, and Sufi.

When he first came to Damascus in 649 H at the age of 18, he memorized the text of al-Imām Abū Ishaq al-Shīrāzī; al-Tanbīh in four and a half months, then the first quarter of al-Muhadhdhab, after which he accompanied his father on ḥajj in 1253, then visited Madīnah, and then returned to Damascus, where he assiduously devoted himself to mastering the Islām ic sciences as a private scholar. From a young age he showed signs of great intelligence, and so his father paid for a good education. As a judge, he was much sought after for advice and adjudication of disputes.

He took Shāfiʿī Law, hadīth, tenets of faith, fundamentals of jurisprudence, Arabic and other subjects from more than twenty-two scholars of the time, including Abū Ibrāhīm Ishaq al-Maghrībī, ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī, and others, at a period of his life in which, as al-Imām al-Dhahabī notes,“his dedication to learning, night and day, became proverbial.”

Spending all his time in either worship or gaining Sacred Knowledge, he took some twelvelesso ns a day, only dozed off in the night at moments when sleep overcame him, and drilled himself on the lessons he learned by heart while walking along the street.

Fastidious in details and deep in understanding of the subjects he thus mastered. He authored many great works in Shāfiʿī jurisprudence, hadīth, history, and legal opinion, among the best known of which are his Minhāj al-ṭālibīn, which has become a main reference for the Shāfiʿī School, Riyāḍ al-ṣālihīn and Kitab al-adhkār in hadīth, and his eighteen-volume Sharh Ṣahīh Muslim.

He lived simply, and it is related that his entire wardrobe consisted of a turban and an ankle-length shirt with a single button at the collar.

After a residence in Damascus of twenty-seven years, he returned the books he had borrowed from charitable endowments, bade his friends farewell, visited the graves of his Shaykhs who had died, and departed, going first to Jerusalem and then to his native Nawa, where he became ill at his father’s home and died at forty-four years of age in 676 H, young in years but great in benefit to Islām and the Muslims.

During his short life of only 45 years he wrote many books on Islamic studies and other topics. He collected and sourced 40 hadith of the Prophet Mohammed back to one of his companions. In 1267 he succeeded Abu Shama as professor of hadith at the Ashrafiyya [school] in the city. He died at Nawa at a relatively young age, having never married.

Shaykh Mohiuddin expresses his impression of Imaam an-Nawawi thus:

Imaam an-Nawawi had three distinctive commendable qualities in his person. If anybody has only one out of these three, people turn to him in abundance for guidance. First, having knowledge and its dissemination. Second, to evade completely from the worldly inclinations, and the third, inviting to all that is good (Islam) enjoining virtue and forbidding vice. Imaam an-Nawawi had all three in him.

Imam an-Nawawi's well-known works or publications include:

• Al Minhaj bi Sharh Sahih Muslim شرح صحيح مسلم, making use of others before him and is considered one of the best commentaries on Sahih Muslim.

• Riyadh as-Saaliheen رياض الصالحين is a collection of hadith on ethics, manners, conduct and is very popular in the Muslim world today.

• al-Majmu' sharh al-Muhadhdhab المجموع شرح المهذب is a comprehensive manual of Islamic law according to the Shafi'i school has been edited with French translation by van den Bergh, 2 vols., Batavia (1882–1884), and published at Cairo (1888).

• Minhaj al-Talibin منهاج الطالبين وعمدة المفتين في فقه الإمام الشافعي, a classical manual on Islamic Law according to Shafi'i fiqh.

• Tahdhib al-Asma wal-Lughat تهذيب الأسماء has been edited as the Biographical Dictionary of Illustrious Men chiefly at the Beginning of Islam by F. Wüstenfeld (Göttingen, 1842–1847).

• Taqrib al-Taisir التقريب والتيسير لمعرفة سنن البشير النذير, an introduction to the study of hadith, it is an extension of Ibn al-Salah's Muqaddimah, was published at Cairo, 1890, with Suyuti's commentary "Tadrib al-Rawi". It has been in part translated into French by W. Marçais in the Journal asiatique, series ix., vols. 16–18 (1900–1901).

• Forty Hadiths الأربعون النووية collection of the forty (actually forty-two) chief traditions has been frequently published along with numerous commentaries. For other works seeC. Brockelmann's Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. i. (Weimar, 1898), pp. 395–397.

• Ma Tamas ilayhi hajat al-Qari ما تمس إليه حاجة القاري لصـحيح البـخاري

• Tahrir al-Tanbih تحرير التنبيه

• Kitab al-Adhkar الأذكار المنتخبة من كلام سيد الأبرار is a collection of supplications of prophet Muhammad.

• al-Tibyan fi adab Hamalat al-Quran التبيان في آداب حملة القرآن

• Adab al-fatwa wa al-Mufti wa al-Mustafti آداب الفتوى والمفتي والمستفتي

• al-Tarkhis fi al-Qiyam الترخيص بالقيام لذوي الفضل والمزية من أهل الإسلام

• Manasik متن الإيضاح في المناسك on Hajj rituals.
• Sharh Sunan Abu Dawood
• Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari
• Mukhtasar at-Tirmidhi
• Tabaqat ash-Shafi'iyah
• Rawdhat al-Talibeen
• Bustan al-`arifin