Biography of Imam an-Nawawi (Yahya ibn Sharaf)

No. 330: Yahya ibn Sharaf ibn Murri ibn Hasan ibn Husayn.

The mufti of the community, the sheikh of Islam, Muhyi ad-Din, Abou Zakariyya an-Nawawi, the hafiz, the jurist, the Shafiite, the ascetic, one of the eminent scholars.

He was born in the middle decade of Muharram in the year thirty-one, according to the Nabatean reckoning. Their ancestor is Husayn ibn Muhammad ibn Jouma ibn Hizam al-Hizami, with a ha and a zay.

Husayn settled in the Golan, in the village of Nawa, following the custom of the Arabs, and he remained there. Allah granted him a progeny that grew numerous.

Sheikh Muhyi ad-Din used to say: some of my ancestors claimed that this name referred to Hizam, the father of Hakim ibn Hizam, may Allah be pleased with him, but this is a mistake.

As for Nawawi, the name is written without an alif, although keeping it is permissible.

The childhood and studies of Imam an-Nawawi

His father related to our sheikh Abou al-Hasan ibn al-Attar that the sheikh, while sleeping beside him at seven years of age, on the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan, awoke around the middle of the night, woke his father and said: "Father, what is this light that has filled the whole house?" The whole household awoke, but they saw nothing. His father then knew that it was the Night of Decree.

Ibn al-Attar said: Sheikh Yassine ibn Youssouf al-Marrakuchi, may Allah have mercy on him, related to me: "I saw the sheikh Muhyi ad-Din at ten years of age, by the Nabatean reckoning, while the children were pressing him to play with them. He would run away, weep, and recite the Quran in that state. Love for him settled in my heart. His father placed him in a shop in the village, but he neglected the selling to devote himself to the Quran. I advised the one who taught him: this one may be destined to be the most knowledgeable person of his era." He then said to me: "Are you an astrologer?" I answered: "No, it is simply Allah who made me say that."

It was reported to his father, who showed even greater zeal for him, as he was approaching puberty.

Ibn al-Attar said: the sheikh told me: "When I was nineteen, my father took me to Damascus in the year forty-nine. I settled in the ar-Rawahiyya school and stayed there for nearly two years without laying my side on anything but the ground. My sustenance consisted only of the school's daily provision."

He memorized "At-Tanbih" in about four and a half months.

He said: "I remained more than two months, while I was reading the rule that the major ablution becomes obligatory after the glans is introduced, thinking it was rumbling of the stomach. I bathed with cold water every time my stomach rumbled."

He said: "I then read by heart a quarter of the 'Mouhadhdhab' during the rest of the year, and I began to explain and correct under our sheikh Kamal ad-Din Ishaq al-Maghribi. I attached myself to him; he admired me and loved me, and assigned me to review for most of his students. In the year fifty-one, I performed the pilgrimage with my father: we departed at the beginning of Rajab and stayed in Medina about a month and a half."

His father said: "As we left Nawa, fever seized him and did not leave him until the day of Arafa, yet he never once lost consciousness."

Then he returned and attached himself to his sheikh Kamal ad-Din Ishaq.

Abou al-Mafakhir Muhammad ibn Abd al-Qadir, the judge, said to me: "If al-Qushayri had known your sheikh and his sheikh, he would not have ranked them after the masters he cites in his Risala, because of what the two of them combined of knowledge, deeds, asceticism, piety, and words of wisdom."

He said: "The sheikh related that he attended twelve lessons every day with the masters, in explanation and correction: two lessons on the 'Wasit', two on the 'Mouhadhdhab', one on the 'Jami bayn as-Sahihayn', one on the 'Sahih Muslim', one on the 'Luma' of Ibn Jinni, one on the 'Islah al-Mantiq' of Ibn as-Sikkit, one on the 'Tasrif', one on the principles of fiqh, at times the 'Luma' of Abou Ishaq and at times the 'Muntakhab' of Fakhr ad-Din, one lesson on the names of the narrators, and one lesson on the principles of religion."

"I noted everything connected with it: the explanation of difficult passages, the clarity of wording, the correction of language. Allah blessed my time. The idea of studying medicine came to me: I bought the book 'Al-Qanun' for that purpose and resolved to devote myself to it. But my heart grew dark, and I remained for days unable to work on anything. I reflected on where this had come from, and Allah inspired me that the cause was my engagement with medicine. I sold the 'Qanun' at once, and my heart was illuminated."

He said: "I was ill at the ar-Rawahiyya school. One night, I was on its eastern terrace, with my father and brothers asleep beside me, when Allah revived me and relieved me of my pain. My soul yearned for the remembrance of Allah, and I began to glorify Him, at times silently and at times aloud. Suddenly, a sheikh of handsome bearing, beautiful in appearance, was performing ablution at the pool in the depth of the night. When he finished, he came to me and said: 'O young man, do not remember Allah aloud, you are disturbing your father, your brothers, and the people of the school.' I said: 'Who are you?' He replied: 'I am your sincere adviser. Let me be as I am.'"

"I thought it was the devil. I said: I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan, and I raised my voice in glorification. He turned away and walked toward the school's door. My father and the people awoke at my voice. I ran to the school door: it was locked from inside. I searched the school and found no one besides its residents. My father said to me: 'Yahya, what is the matter with you?'"

"I told him the whole story. They all marveled, and we sat together glorifying Allah and remembering Him."

He said: "Then he devoted himself to hadith. He heard the 'Sahih Muslim' from ar-Radi ibn al-Burhan, the 'Sahih al-Boukhari', the 'Musnad of Ahmad', the 'Sunan of Abou Dawoud', those of an-Nasa'i, that of Ibn Majah, the 'Jami of at-Tirmidhi', the 'Musnad of ash-Shafi'i', the 'Sunan of ad-Daruqutni', the 'Charh as-Sunna', and many other works."

"He heard hadith from: Ibn Abd ad-Da'im, az-Zayn Khalid, the sheikh of sheikhs Sharaf ad-Din Abd al-Aziz, the judge Imad ad-Din Abd al-Karim ibn al-Harastani, Abou Muhammad Abd ar-Rahman ibn Salim al-Anbari, Abou Muhammad Ismail ibn Abi al-Yasar, Abou Zakariyya Yahya ibn as-Sayrafi, Abou al-Fadl Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Bakri, the sheikh Shams ad-Din Abou al-Faraj Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abi Umar, and a group of others."

"He took the science of hadith from a number of hafiz. He read the 'Kamil' of Abd al-Ghani the hafiz under Abou an-Naqa Khalid an-Nabulsi, and the commentary on Muslim and most of the 'Boukhari' under Abou Ishaq ibn Isa al-Muradi."

"He took the principles of fiqh from the judge Abou al-Fath al-Tiflisi: he read the 'Muntakhab' and a portion of the 'Mustasfa' of al-Ghazali under him."

"He studied fiqh in depth under the imam Kamal ad-Din Ishaq al-Maghribi then al-Maqdisi, the imam Shams ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman ibn Nuh al-Maqdisi then Damascene, and Izz ad-Din Umar ibn Asad al-Irbili."

"An-Nawawi behaved as a disciple with this Irbili: he would rise, fill the ewer, and carry it before him to the place of ablution."

"There was also the imam Kamal ad-Din Sallar ibn al-Husayn al-Irbili then al-Halabi, companion of the imam Abou Bakr al-Mahani."

"The first three had themselves studied under Ibn as-Salah, may Allah have mercy on him."

"He studied grammar under Fakhr ad-Din al-Maliki and the sheikh Ahmad ibn Salim al-Misri."

"He read a book of Ibn Malik among his works and transmitted annotations from him."

The narrators of Imam an-Nawawi

Those who took from him: the judge Sadr ad-Din Sulayman al-Jabari, preacher of Darayya, the sheikh Shihab ad-Din Ahmad ibn Jawwan, the sheikh Ala ad-Din Ali ibn al-Attar, Amin ad-Din Salim ibn Abi ad-Durr, and the judge Shihab ad-Din al-Irbidi.

Those who transmitted from him: Ibn al-Attar, al-Mizzi, Ibn Abi al-Fath, and a great crowd.

The jurist Ali ibn al-Muwaffaq informed us: Yahya ibn Sharaf the jurist informed us: Khalid ibn Youssouf ibn Sad the hafiz informed us. And Sitt al-Arab bint Yahya informed us: Zayd ibn al-Hasan informed us: al-Mubarak ibn al-Husayn informed us: Ali ibn Ahmad informed us: Muhammad ibn Abd ar-Rahman informed us: Abdallah informed us: Shayban informed us: Hammad ibn Salama, from Thabit, from Anas who said: the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said: "Whoever sincerely desires martyrdom from his heart, Allah will grant it to him even if he does not attain it." Reported by Muslim, from Shayban. I read in the handwriting of Najm ad-Din Ibn al-Khabbaz: "The imam Muhyi ad-Din an-Nawawi informed us: Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abi Umar ibn Qudama the jurist informed us: Abou Abdallah ibn az-Zubaydi informed us: Abou al-Waqt informed us," then he mentions the first hadith of the Sahih.

Our sheikh Ibn al-Attar said: our sheikh, may Allah have mercy on him, related to me that he never wasted any time, by night or by day, without engaging in some task of knowledge: even on the road he would repeat or review. He kept this up for nearly six years, then turned to authorship, teaching, and counselling the Muslims and their rulers, while striving against himself, putting into practice the subtlest points of fiqh, taking care to rise above the disagreements of the scholars, watching over the deeds of his heart and purifying them of their impurities. He held himself to account for every fleeting thought that crossed his mind.

He was accomplished in his knowledge and its branches, penetrating in his discipline. He was a hafiz of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: he knew its categories, the authentic and the defective, the rare senses of terms and the legal rulings derived from them. He was a hafiz of the madhhab, its rules and principles, of the sayings of the Companions and the Followers, of the agreements and disagreements of the scholars, following therein the way of the early generations. He devoted all his time to the sciences and to acting upon knowledge.

He said: our companion Abou Abdallah Muhammad ibn Abi al-Fath al-Hanbali related to me: "One night, late in the night, in a mosque of Damascus, the sheikh was standing in supererogatory prayer in the darkness, repeating the word of the Most High: 'And stop them; they are to be questioned' (Surah as-Saffat, verse 24) over and over, with sorrow and humility, until what it produced in me only Allah knows."

He said: "When he mentioned the righteous, he did so with veneration and respect, relating their virtues and their wonders." Our sheikh Waliyy ad-Din Ali, who lived in Bayt Lihya, said to me: "I was afflicted with gout, and the sheikh Muhyi ad-Din visited me. As soon as he sat down, he began to speak of patience: each time he spoke, the pain diminished little by little, until it disappeared entirely. Now I no longer slept at night, and I knew that this relief came from his blessing."

Sheikh Rashid ad-Din ibn al-Muallim said: "I reproached the sheikh for never entering the bath and for restricting his life, in his food, clothing, and conditions of living. I said to him: I fear for you an illness that would keep you from better things than what you pursue. He answered: 'So-and-so fasted and worshipped Allah until he turned green.' I then knew that he had no aim in this abode of ours and cared nothing for our condition."

He said: "I saw a man peel a gourd to offer it to him. He refused and said: I fear my body would become moist and sleep would come upon me."

He said: "He ate, in the day and the night, only one meal after the final night prayer, and drank only a single sip at dawn. He never drank cold water and ate no fruit. He was asked about that and said: 'Damascus abounds in endowments and in properties whose owners are under guardianship. They may only be disposed of by advantageous exchange, their cultivation is by crop-sharing, and disputes abound, while the people take only a tiny fraction, one part in a thousand, from the owner. How could my soul delight in eating from that?'"

Our sheikh Majd ad-Din Abou Abdallah ibn az-Zahir said to me: "Sheikh Taqi ad-Din Ibn as-Salah did not reach what the sheikh Muhyi ad-Din attained: knowledge of fiqh, of hadith, and of language, and sweetness of expression."

The works of Imam an-Nawawi

Allah, the Most High, blessed the community through his works: they spread through the lands and were carried to the great cities. Among them: "Al-Minhaj", commentary on the Sahih of Muslim; "Kitab al-Adhkar"; "Riyad as-Salihin"; "The Forty Hadiths"; "Al-Irshad" on the sciences of hadith; "At-Taysir" on the abridgement of the mentioned Irshad; "Al-Mubhamat"; "At-Tahrir" on the terms of the Tanbih; "Al-Umda" on the Sahih of the Tanbih; "Al-Idhah" on the rites of pilgrimage; "Al-Ijaz" on the rites, and he has four other manuals of rites.

As well as "At-Tibyan" on the duties of the bearers of the Quran; fatwas; "Ar-Rawda" in four large volumes; "Al-Minhaj" on the madhhab; "Al-Majmu", commentary on the Mouhadhdhab, which reaches the gate of the chapter on rain in four large volumes; a commentary on a portion of the Boukhari; a fine commentary on the beginning of the "Wasit"; a piece on legal judgments; a large piece of the "Tahdhib al-Asma wa-l-Lughat"; a draft on the generations of jurists; a piece of verification in fiqh, up to the chapter on the prayer of the traveller.

Ibn al-Attar said: "He had numerous drafts. Once he ordered me to sell nearly a thousand notebooks written in his hand and to attend their pulping at the paper-maker's. I did not disobey his order, but my heart keeps regrets over them."

Sheikh Rashid ad-Din al-Fariqi cast his eyes on the "Minhaj" and said:

Yahya was enriched by grace: enriched
By a saying simple, brief and useful,
Adorned with his piety and his merit, he shines
With a subtle light embracing all,
Raising landmarks of decisive knowledge,
With a word that lifts ar-Rafi'i high,
Until Ibn as-Salah seems present among us,
And the departed, ash-Shafi'i, seems here again.

He accepted nothing from anyone, save on rare occasions, and from someone who had no tie of teaching with him. A poor man once offered him a ewer: he accepted it. Sheikh Burhan ad-Din al-Iskandarani resolved to break his fast at his place during Ramadan. He said: "Bring the food here, and we break the fast together." Abou al-Hasan said: "We three broke our fast on two dishes or more."

The sheikh would sometimes combine two sauces in one meal. He commanded good and forbade evil, fearing no one's blame in Allah. He confronted kings and tyrants to forbid wrong, and when he could not confront them, he wrote letters. Among the letters he wrote, and which he entrusted to me to pursue, was one calling for justice toward the subjects and the abolition of unlawful taxes. Our sheikhs joined him in it: Shams ad-Din, az-Zawawi, ash-Shayrishi, the sheikh Ibrahim ibn al-Armawi, and the preacher Ibn al-Harastani. He set it down on a sheet addressed to the keeper of the treasury, in which was written: "From the slave of Allah Yahya an-Nawawi: may the peace of Allah, His mercy, and His blessings be upon the benevolent lord, the king of the emirs Badr ad-Din, may Allah multiply for him His favors, grant him the best of both worlds, fulfil for him every hope, and bless all his conditions, amine. The honorable sciences make known that the people of Sham are in hardship and weakness, because of the scarcity of rains and the rise in prices..." He developed a long passage there. When the treasurer took note of it, he forwarded the sheet to the sultan, who sent back a harsh and painful reply. The hearts of the group were grieved.

He wrote other letters as well to King az-Zahir, enjoining good.

Ibn al-Attar said: the traditionist Abou al-Abbas ibn Farah told me, he who had two weekly appointments with the sheikh to explain the two Sahihs under him: "The sheikh Muhyi ad-Din attained three ranks, each one of which alone would have made people travel to him. The first is knowledge; the second, asceticism; the third, commanding good and forbidding evil."

The death of Imam an-Nawawi

The sheikh travelled to Nawa, visited Jerusalem and Hebron, returned to Nawa, and fell ill at his father's house. Ibn al-Attar said: "I visited him. He rejoiced at seeing me, then said to me: return to your family. I bade him farewell while he was on the verge of recovery, and that was a Saturday. He passed away on Wednesday night."

He said: "That night, as I slept, a herald cried from the gallery of the great mosque of Damascus, on a Friday: 'Prayer upon the sheikh Rukn ad-Din.' The people cried out at this. I awoke and said: we belong to Allah and to Him we return. The following Thursday his death reached us: it was announced on Friday after the prayer, and the funeral prayer in absence was performed for him."

Sheikh Qutb ad-Din said: "On the night of Wednesday the twenty-fourth of Rajab, the sheikh Muhyi ad-Din an-Nawawi, author of the great works, passed away in Nawa, and there he was buried. He was the unmatched man of his era in piety, worship, detachment, austerity of living, and commanding good."

King az-Zahir sat in the hall of justice more than once. It is related of King az-Zahir that he said: "It is I who keep my distance from him."

His aims were noble. He was appointed to head Dar al-Hadith. I say: he was appointed after the death of Abou Shama, in the year sixty-five, and remained there until his death.

Shams ad-Din Ibn al-Fakhkhar said: "He was an imam, highly gifted, a hafiz, a mufti. He mastered many sciences and composed immense works. His piety and asceticism were extreme: he renounced all the pleasures of this world, eating only what his father brought him, dry biscuit and Hawran figs, and wearing only patched garments. He never entered the bath and gave up all fruit."

He commanded good and forbade evil before emirs, kings, and common people alike. We ask Allah to be pleased with him, and to be pleased with us through him.

To relate his merits would take too long. He renounced all worldly pursuits and took from any of them not a single dirham.

Our sheikh Abou al-Hasan ibn al-Attar related that the sheikh removed his garment and one of the students began beating it to clean it. There were lice in it. The sheikh stopped him and said: "Leave it."

I say: his clothing resembled that of the jurists of the Hawran, attracting no attention. He wore a small stole; his beard was black with a few white hairs, and he radiated gravity and serenity.

He had no patience for the shouts of the jurists in debate, but spoke with slowness, majesty, and dignity.

More than twenty people mourned him, in over six hundred verses, among them: Majd ad-Din Ibn az-Zahir, the chief judge Najm ad-Din Ibn Sasra, Majd ad-Din Ibn al-Muhtar, Ala ad-Din al-Kindi the secretary, and al-Afif al-Tilmisani, the Sufi poet.

His relatives wanted to build a dome over his tomb. His aunt, or a close relative, saw him in a dream and he said to her: "Tell them not to do what they have resolved: every time they build something, it is destroyed upon them." She awoke distressed, told them of her vision, and they surrounded his tomb with stones that turn back the beasts.

Abou al-Hasan said: "People of Nawa told me that they asked him one day not to forget them on the plains of the Resurrection. He answered: 'If I still have... and any nobility, by Allah, were I to enter Paradise, not one of those I know would remain behind me.'"

I say: our book could not bear more of what we have related of the biography of this master, may Allah have mercy on him. His doctrine concerning the transmitted attributes was silence and passing them on as they came. He did interpret somewhat at times, in his commentary on Muslim, may Allah, the Most High, have mercy on him.