al-Nawawi

Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi was a Sunni jurist of the Shafi'i madhhab (one of the four Sunni schools of Islamic law) and a hadith scholar — a specialist in the reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. He is among the most widely read authors in later Sunni Islam.

He was born in Muharram 631 AH (October 1233 CE) in Nawa, a town on the Hawran plain south of Damascus, from which he takes his name. According to his student and biographer Ibn al-Attar, his father brought him to Damascus around 649 AH (1251) to study, where he lodged at the Rawahiyya college and is said to have lived very austerely. He studied law, hadith, theology and Arabic with many teachers. Reports hold that he performed the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca and stayed about a month and a half in Medina, ill for much of the journey.

In 665 AH (1267) he was appointed head of the Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyya, a leading hadith college in Damascus, a post he held until his death. He never married and lived simply. He died in Nawa, where he had returned to visit his father, on 24 Rajab 676 AH (December 1277), aged about 45.

His enduring works include Riyad al-Salihin (a curated anthology of hadith on ethics), the Forty Hadith (al-Arba'in), the Adhkar (devotional formulas), the Minhaj al-Talibin — a core Shafi'i legal manual — and his eighteen-part commentary on the hadith collection Sahih Muslim.