al-Nawawī

The leading Shāfiʿī scholar of thirteenth-century Damascus, named with Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ in al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam as one of those who held the study of logic to be forbidden.

Life

Al-Nawawī was born in 631/1234 in Nawā in the Ḥawrān region of southern Syria. He studied in Damascus at the Rawāḥiyya madrasa, with teachers in hadith, Shāfiʿī law, legal theory and grammar (among them the grammarian Ibn Mālik). In 665/1267 he became head of the Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya in Damascus, the institution Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ had led, and held the post until his death. He died in his home village on 24 Rajab 676 (21 December 1277).

His works are among the most read in the Muslim world: the collections Riyāḍ al-ṣāliḥīn and al-Arbaʿūn (the “Forty Hadith”), the commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, al-Adhkār, the legal handbooks Minhāj al-ṭālibīn and Rawḍat al-ṭālibīn, and the unfinished al-Majmūʿ. Several of his books rework works by Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ: he abridged Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s introduction to hadith science and his biographical dictionary of Shāfiʿī jurists.

On logic he is reported to have followed Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s prohibition; this is how al-Akhḍarī presents him in the Sullam (“Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and al-Nawawī forbade it”). The biographical article in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi does not discuss his view of logic, and the exact text in which he states it is not identified in the sources consulted here.

Works

• Riyāḍ al-ṣāliḥīn رِيَاضُ الصَّالِحِينَCollection of hadith on ethics and devotion.work
• Minhāj al-ṭālibīn مِنْهَاجُ الطَّالِبِينَHandbook of Shāfiʿī law.work
• al-Irshād and al-Taqrīb wa-l-taysīr الإِرْشَادُ وَالتَّقْرِيبُ وَالتَّيْسِيرُAbridgements of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s introduction to hadith science.work

Reception

Because of his authority in the Shāfiʿī school, his name gave weight to the opposing view. Later Shāfiʿīs took a more positive view: Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī wrote a commentary on the Īsāghūjī, and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī cited al-Ghazālī’s endorsement of logic in a fatwa.