Introduction

Al-Arbaʿīn al-Nawawiyyah — usually rendered “Nawawi's Forty Hadith” — is a short, carefully chosen collection of prophetic traditions compiled by the 13th-century scholar Imām al-Nawawī. Despite its name, the collection actually contains 42 hadith, gathered because together they touch on many of the foundational principles of the religion.

Imām al-Nawawī (Abū Zakariyyā Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī) was born near Damascus in 631H and died young, at 45, in 676H — yet in that short life he produced some of the most widely studied works in Islamic scholarship, among them this collection, Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn, and Kitāb al-Adhkār.

This page collects introductory material — before the forty-two hadith themselves begin — starting with the spoken introduction from the Masjid bin Baz Radio explanation series below. Introductions from the site’s other scholars will be added here as they’re sourced.