The "Forty Hadiths" of Imam al-Nawawi

A New Translation with Accompanying Commentary and Jurisprudence

Al-Arba‘in al-Nawawiyyah (“al-Nawawi’s Forty”) is a compilation of forty hadiths by Imam al-Nawawi, a thirteenth-century ce scholar and one of the most eminent and revered authorities in Islamic jurisprudence. These hadiths, or reports of the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, derive mainly from al-Bukhari and Muslim, who, in the ninth century ce, collected the hadiths that are considered the soundest and most authentic by Muslims today. Al-Nawawi’s distillation was undertaken with the objective of establishing an “axis of Islam”. Indeed, it became one of the most influential texts in Islam down to the present day. In this volume, Dr Mahmoud Makkouk has translated al-Nawawi’s Forty anew, adding commentary and jurisprudence after each hadith.