Imam al-Nawawi

الإمام النووي

Abu Zakariyya

Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi (631–676 AH / 1234–1277 CE) was a major Shafiʿi jurist and hadith scholar based in Damascus. Born in Nawā, he moved to Damascus at about eighteen and pursued an exceptionally intensive scholarly life centered on Shafiʿi law and hadith. He became head of Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyya in 665 AH / 1267 CE. His works include Riyad al-Salihin, the Forty Hadith, al-Adhkar, al-Minhaj fi sharh Sahih Muslim, Minhaj al-Talibin, Rawdat al-Talibin and the unfinished al-Majmuʿ. In Shafiʿi law, his editorial and tarjih work became a major reference for later jurists. Biographical sources also preserve his interventions with Sultan Baybars against burdensome taxation and seizure of private property. He died in Nawā on 24 Rajab 676 AH / 21 December 1277 CE.

1234 — 1277

Names and variants

Imam al-Nawawi· canonicalImam al-Nawawi· canonicalالإمام النووي· canonicalYahya ibn Sharaf ibn Murri· birth nameيحيى بن شرف بن مري· birth nameAbu Zakariyya· kunyaأبو زكريا· kunyaal-Nawawi· nisbaالنووي· nisbaal-Hawrani· nisbaالحوراني· nisbaal-Hizami· nisbaالحزامي· nisbaNevevî· transliteration

Imam al-Nawawi

Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi was a major Shafiʿi jurist and hadith scholar of seventh-century Damascus whose unusually concentrated scholarly career produced works that became central to Sunni hadith, law, devotional practice and scholarly education.

Sources: [1] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [2] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [3] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [4] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [5] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [6] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [7] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [8] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history, [9] Biographical, hadith, legal or reception history

Full name

His full name is commonly given as Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Sharaf ibn Murri al-Nawawi.

Kunya: Abu Zakariyya

Although he never married and had no son named Zakariyya, he bore the conventional kunya Abu Zakariyya.

The nisba al-Nawawi

His best-known nisba derives from Nawā, his native village in the Hawran region of southern Syria.

The nisba al-Hawrani

Sources also call him al-Hawrani after the wider Hawran region.

The nisba al-Hizami

A further nisba, al-Hizami, is linked in the biographical tradition to an ancestor named Hizam.

Birth in 631 AH / 1234 CE

Al-Nawawi was born in Nawā in 631 AH / 1234 CE.

Work in his father’s shop

During adolescence he worked in his father’s shop even though, according to the biographical tradition, he was not attracted to commerce and continued attending scholarly lessons.

Move to Damascus at eighteen

When he reached about eighteen years of age, his father took him to Damascus and placed him in the Rawahiyya madrasa.

The Rawahiyya madrasa

The Rawahiyya madrasa became the base of al-Nawawi’s intensive formal education in Shafiʿi law and related sciences.

Memorizing al-Tanbih

He memorized Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi’s al-Tanbih, an important Shafiʿi legal text.

Studying al-Muhadhdhab

He also studied and memorized substantial portions of al-Shirazi’s al-Muhadhdhab, which later became the basis of his unfinished monumental commentary al-Majmuʿ.

Hajj and study in Medina

About two years after arriving in Damascus, he performed Hajj with his father and spent time in Medina attending scholarly lessons.

Broad hadith training

Al-Nawawi studied and received authorization in a broad range of major hadith collections, including the Six Books, al-Muwatta, musnads and other canonical works.

Study of Sahih Muslim

He studied Sahih Muslim under Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Umar al-Wasiti and later wrote one of its most influential commentaries.

Ibrahim al-Muradi

For roughly ten years he benefited from Ibrahim ibn Isa al-Muradi al-Andalusi, especially in the explanation of Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Ibn Qudama as hadith teacher

Abu al-Faraj Ibn Qudama was among his teachers in hadith.

Teachers in Shafiʿi law

His legal teachers included Ishaq ibn Ahmad al-Maghribi, Abd al-Rahman ibn Nuh al-Maqdisi and Sallar ibn al-Hasan al-Irbili.

Training in legal theory

He studied legal theory with the judge Abu al-Fath Umar ibn Bundar al-Tiflisi.

Grammar with Ibn Malik

Among his teachers in grammar was the celebrated grammarian Ibn Malik al-Taʾi.

Teaching and writing from 660 AH

After completing his formation, al-Nawawi taught students and began producing books from around 660 AH / 1262 CE.

Head of Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyya

In 665 AH / 1267 CE, after the death of Abu Shama al-Maqdisi, al-Nawawi became head of Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyya in Damascus and remained in that post until his death.

Ibn al-Attar

Ala al-Din Ibn al-Attar was among his closest students and accompanied him continuously during the final six years of his life, later becoming an important biographical source.

Other students

His students included Ibn Farah al-Ishbili, Badr al-Din Ibn Jamaʿa, Ali al-Azraʿi and other later scholars.

Ascetic lifestyle

Biographical sources consistently portray al-Nawawi as living simply, avoiding luxury and limiting his personal consumption despite his scholarly positions.

He never married

Al-Nawawi never married, reportedly because he feared that family obligations would distract him from study and teaching.

Using his stipend for books

Biographical reports state that he used his madrasa stipend to acquire books and then donated them back to the institution.

Riyad al-Salihin

Riyad al-Salihin is al-Nawawi’s thematic collection of Qurʾanic verses and hadiths intended to guide Muslim ethical, devotional and social life.

Completed in 670 AH / 1272 CE

Riyad al-Salihin was completed on 14 Ramadan 670 AH / 14 April 1272 CE.

Structure of Riyad al-Salihin

TDV describes the work as containing eighteen main sections, nearly four hundred chapters and around nineteen hundred hadiths.

Sources of Riyad al-Salihin

Most reports were selected from the Six Books, with additional material from works such as al-Muwatta, Musnad Ahmad and other hadith collections.

A small number of disputed weak reports

Al-Nawawi described the hadiths he selected as sound, but later specialists identified a small number of reports they considered weak. Estimates differ, so the work should not be described as containing only universally agreed sahih reports.

The Forty Hadith: its actual basis

Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith builds on Ibn al-Salah’s collection of twenty-six foundational hadiths and adds sixteen reports, most selected from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Why the Forty contains forty-two hadiths

The famous work known as the Forty Hadith actually contains forty-two hadiths in the standard recension.

Chains omitted in the Forty

Al-Nawawi omitted full chains of transmission in the Forty Hadith to make the collection concise and practical.

Commentary on Sahih Muslim

His al-Minhaj fi sharh Sahih Muslim became one of the most important commentaries on Sahih Muslim.

Method in the Muslim commentary

The commentary identifies transmitters, explains difficult vocabulary, reconciles apparently conflicting reports and discusses legal conclusions.

Chapter headings in Sahih Muslim

One notable feature of al-Nawawi’s commentary is the chapter-heading structure attached to Sahih Muslim that became highly influential in later printed editions and study.

Minhaj al-Talibin

Minhaj al-Talibin is al-Nawawi’s concise reworking of al-Rafiʿi’s al-Muharrar and became a central reference text of later Shafiʿi law.

Completed in 669 AH / 1271 CE

Minhaj al-Talibin was completed on 19 Ramadan 669 AH / 1 May 1271 CE.

Precise terminology for preferred opinions

In Minhaj al-Talibin, al-Nawawi used technical labels such as azhar, mashhur, asah and sahih to distinguish different levels and types of preferred Shafiʿi opinions.

Rawdat al-Talibin

Rawdat al-Talibin is a major condensation and reworking of al-Rafiʿi’s commentary tradition and became another standard reference in Shafiʿi jurisprudence.

Al-Majmuʿ

Al-Majmuʿ sharh al-Muhadhdhab is al-Nawawi’s expansive comparative commentary on al-Shirazi’s al-Muhadhdhab, combining Shafiʿi doctrine, hadith criticism and discussion of other legal schools.

Al-Majmuʿ remained unfinished

Al-Nawawi died while still working on al-Majmuʿ, leaving the work incomplete; later Shafiʿi scholars attempted to continue it.

Al-Adhkar

Al-Adhkar gathers hadiths on remembrance, supplication and daily devotional practice and became another widely transmitted manual.

Al-Tibyan

Al-Tibyan fi adab hamalat al-Qurʾan addresses the ethics and practices of those who recite, teach, learn and carry the Qurʾan.

Works on hadith methodology

Through Irshad tullab al-haqaʾiq and al-Taqrib wa-l-taysir, al-Nawawi condensed and transmitted Ibn al-Salah’s hadith methodology for later generations.

An unfinished commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari

Al-Nawawi also began a commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari but did not live long enough to proceed beyond the Book of Faith.

Authority in the Shafiʿi school

Al-Nawawi became one of the principal authorities for determining relied-upon positions in the later Shafiʿi madhhab, especially together with al-Rafiʿi.

A consolidator, not the founder of the school

His role was not to found the Shafiʿi school but to refine, organize and critically transmit a legal tradition already several centuries old.

Letters to Sultan Baybars

Biographical sources report that al-Nawawi wrote repeatedly to Sultan Baybars, urging relief for the people of Damascus during hardship and opposing burdensome taxation.

Opposition to seizure of private property

During the Mongol threat to Syria, al-Nawawi opposed proposals to seize private property for military financing before the ruler’s own available resources had been exhausted, according to the biographical tradition.

Scholarly independence from rulers

His interventions with Baybars became an enduring example in his biographies of a scholar publicly challenging political authority on questions of justice and public burden.

Final journey from Damascus

Near the end of his life, al-Nawawi visited the graves of his teachers and acquaintances, donated his books to the madrasa, visited Jerusalem and returned to Nawā.

Death in 676 AH / 1277 CE

Al-Nawawi died in Nawā on 24 Rajab 676 AH / 21 December 1277 CE.

His age at death

Because medieval age can be expressed differently depending on lunar or solar reckoning, it is more precise to preserve his dated birth and death than to reduce the chronology to a single rounded age such as forty-four.

Hadith legacy

His commentary on Sahih Muslim, devotional collections and works on hadith methodology made him a lasting authority in Sunni hadith study.

Legal legacy

Minhaj al-Talibin, Rawdat al-Talibin and al-Majmuʿ gave al-Nawawi an exceptionally durable place in the textual architecture of the Shafiʿi school.

Devotional legacy

Riyad al-Salihin, al-Adhkar, the Forty Hadith and al-Tibyan carried his influence far beyond specialist jurists into everyday Muslim devotional and ethical education.

A short life with an unusually large scholarly afterlife

Al-Nawawi’s influence is striking because a life ending in 676 AH produced a body of hadith, legal and devotional works that remained embedded in teaching and commentary traditions for centuries.

Source-sensitive points

established

Al-Nawawi was born in Nawa in 631 AH / 1234 CE.

established

Al-Nawawi died in Nawa on 24 Rajab 676 AH / 21 December 1277 CE.

established

Al-Nawawi moved to Damascus at about eighteen years of age and entered the Rawahiyya madrasa.

established

In 665 AH / 1267 CE al-Nawawi became head of Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyya and retained the post until his death.

established

Riyad al-Salihin was completed on 14 Ramadan 670 AH / 14 April 1272 CE.

established

Riyad al-Salihin contains eighteen main sections, nearly four hundred chapters and around nineteen hundred hadiths according to TDV.

established

Later specialists identified a small number of reports in Riyad al-Salihin that they considered weak, despite al-Nawawi’s general presentation of the collection as reliable.

established

Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith expands Ibn al-Salah’s collection of twenty-six foundational hadiths by adding sixteen more.

established

The standard recension of al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith contains forty-two hadiths.

established

Al-Nawawi’s al-Minhaj became one of the most influential commentaries on Sahih Muslim.

established

Al-Nawawi’s commentary supplied a chapter-heading structure for Sahih Muslim that became highly influential in later editions and study.

established

Minhaj al-Talibin was completed on 19 Ramadan 669 AH / 1 May 1271 CE.

established

Minhaj al-Talibin is a concise critical reworking of al-Rafiʿi’s al-Muharrar.

established

Al-Nawawi died before completing al-Majmuʿ sharh al-Muhadhdhab.

established

Al-Nawawi became one of the principal later authorities for determining relied-upon positions in the Shafiʿi school.

established

Al-Nawawi did not found the Shafiʿi school; his role was to refine, organize and critically transmit an already established legal tradition.

reported

Biographical sources report that al-Nawawi wrote to Sultan Baybars urging relief for the people of Damascus and opposing burdensome taxation.

reported

Biographical sources report that al-Nawawi opposed seizure of private property for military financing before the ruler’s own resources had been exhausted.

established

Al-Nawawi never married and devoted his adult life intensely to study, teaching and writing.

established

It is more precise to preserve al-Nawawi’s dated birth and death than to reduce his chronology to a single rounded age such as forty-four.

Contributions

A defining commentator of Sahih Muslim

Al-Nawawi’s al-Minhaj became one of the most influential commentaries on Sahih Muslim, combining narrator identification, linguistic explanation, reconciliation of reports and legal analysis.

scholarly · established

A central architect of later Shafiʿi doctrine

Through Minhaj al-Talibin, Rawdat al-Talibin and al-Majmuʿ, al-Nawawi helped organize and refine the authoritative vocabulary and preferred positions of later Shafiʿi law.

scholarly · established

A transmitter of hadith methodology

His condensations of Ibn al-Salah’s methodology helped transmit technical hadith sciences to later generations and became objects of major commentarial traditions.

scholarly · established

A durable devotional curriculum

Riyad al-Salihin, al-Adhkar, the Forty Hadith and al-Tibyan created an enduring curriculum of ethical, devotional and Qurʾanic practice used far beyond specialist scholarly circles.

religious · established

An enduring model of scholarly independence

His reported interventions with Sultan Baybars became a prominent example of a scholar challenging political authority over taxation, public hardship and private property.

other · established

Sources

[1]
Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ
al-Dhahabī · Classical biographical source
[2]
al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya
Ibn Kathīr · Classical historical source
[3]
Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā
Taj al-Din al-Subki · Classical Shafiʿi biographical source
[4]
Tārīkh al-Islām
al-Dhahabi · Classical historical-biographical source
[5]
NEVEVÎ
M. Yaşar Kandemir · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 2007
[6]
Tuḥfat al-ṭālibīn fī tarjamat al-Imām Muḥyī al-Dīn
Ibn al-Attar · Classical biography of al-Nawawi
[7]
MİNHÂCÜ’t-TÂLİBÎN
M. Kâmil Yaşaroğlu · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 2020
[8]
RİYÂZÜ’s-SÂLİHÎN
Raşit Küçük · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 2008
[9]
el-MİNHÂC - Nevevî
TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi

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