Fasting (Sawm), Hajj, and Nawawi's Legacy

Al-Nawawi's treatment of fasting (sawm) and pilgrimage (hajj) in Al-Majmu' completes the coverage of the five pillars of Islam and represents the final major sections of the work as Nawawi left it. Together with the earlier chapters on prayer and zakah, these sections constitute one of the most authoritative expositions of Shafi'i worship law ever written.

The Obligations of Fasting

Al-Nawawi identifies the obligatory acts that constitute the Ramadan fast: abstaining from eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse from the onset of true dawn (fajr sadiq) until sunset, with the intention to fast made the previous night or in the morning before noon for obligatory fasts. He discusses in detail the acts that break the fast (muftirat) and the categories of people for whom fasting is obligatory, recommended, or excused.

A topic of sustained discussion is the permissibility of breaking the fast for travelers and the sick. Al-Nawawi explains that the Shafi'i school permits (but does not require) travelers who are on a journey of the type that shortens prayer (safar qasr) to break the Ramadan fast and make it up later. The same permission extends to those who are genuinely ill and for whom fasting would cause harm. He addresses the contentious question of whether a traveler who begins a day's fast before departing must continue it for that day, concluding that the preferred Shafi'i position is that he may break it once he departs.

The Pillars and Obligations of Hajj

The hajj chapter covers the obligatory pilgrimage to Makkah, one of the five pillars of Islam, required once in a lifetime for every Muslim who is able — meaning they have sufficient financial means, physical health, and security of the route. Al-Nawawi distinguishes between the pillars (arkan) of hajj without which it is invalid and cannot be compensated by a blood offering, and the obligations (wajibat) whose omission requires a compensatory sacrifice.

The pillars of hajj in the Shafi'i school are: the ihram (entering the state of ritual consecration), the standing at Arafat (wuquf), the circumambulation of the Kaaba (tawaf al-ifadah), and the walking between Safa and Marwa (sa'y). The wuquf at Arafat is described as the essential pillar — the hadith states that hajj is Arafat — and the timing of this standing (between midday on the ninth of Dhul-Hijja and dawn of the tenth) is discussed in detail.

The Legacy of Al-Majmu'

Al-Nawawi died in 676 AH at the age of forty-five, leaving Al-Majmu' incomplete. Despite this, the portions he completed became immediately authoritative in the Shafi'i school, and subsequent scholars worked to complete his work out of reverence for his scholarship. The completed Al-Majmu' became the reference work to which Shafi'i scholars throughout the Muslim world turned for definitive statements of school doctrine, legal proof-texts, and comparative legal analysis.

The work's influence extends beyond the Shafi'i school. Its method of combining detailed legal analysis with hadith evaluation and comparative law made it a model for subsequent encyclopedic fiqh works across all schools. Ibn Qudamah's Al-Mughni in the Hanbali tradition and Ibn Abd al-Barr's works in the Maliki tradition occupy analogous positions, but Al-Majmu' is arguably the most technically comprehensive of them all, reflecting both al-Nawawi's extraordinary range and the accumulated jurisprudential richness of the Shafi'i school by the seventh century AH.