al-Nawawi

Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi (631–676 AH / 1233–1277 CE) was one of the greatest scholars in the history of Islam, a Syrian Shafiite jurist and hadith master whose works on Islamic law, hadith, and spirituality are among the most widely read and taught in the Muslim world to this day. He was born in Nawa near Damascus, from which his name is derived, and came to Damascus as a teenager to study.

Despite living only to age 45, al-Nawawi produced an extraordinary body of scholarship. His major works include: Riyadh al-Salihin (Gardens of the Righteous), a collection of hadith on Islamic ethics and piety that is read in virtually every mosque; al-Arba'un al-Nawawiyya (the Forty Hadith of al-Nawawi), forty-two fundamental hadith with commentaries that every student of Islamic knowledge memorizes; Minhaj al-Talibin, the premier reference manual of Shafiite jurisprudence; Sharh Sahih Muslim, the most celebrated commentary on Muslim's hadith collection; and al-Majmu', an encyclopedic commentary on al-Shirazi's al-Muhadhdhab that he left incomplete.

He was known for his extreme asceticism — he reportedly ate once a day, owned almost nothing, and spent virtually all his time in study and worship. He refused positions and honors, returned gifts from rulers, and lived in the most minimal circumstances. Despite this, his scholarship was expansive and precise.

He died in Nawa in 676 AH, returning to his hometown in his final years. His influence on Islamic scholarship is rivaled by very few — his hadith collection Riyadh al-Salihin and his Forty Hadith are arguably the two most widely circulated Islamic texts after the Quran and the six major hadith collections themselves.