al-Arbaʿūn al-Nawawiyya
ed. Muḥyī al-Dīn Mistū · Muʾassasat al-Risāla, Beirut · 1402 AH
Hadith الحديث
The recorded words and practice of the Prophet ﷺ, the science of how they were transmitted, and how a report is graded.
The books, level by level
Which text comes when. Start at the top unless you already read Arabic — each book says how much of it exists here.
Foundation
Intermediate
Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn
Imām al-Nawawī
Al-Nawawī’s large thematic collection — roughly 1,900 hadith arranged by subject rather than by narrator. The bridge between the forty and the full collections.
PlannedNukhbat al-Fikar
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī
How a report is graded. The terminology of hadith criticism — ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan, ḍaʿīf and the rest — compressed into a few pages by the man who wrote the commentary on al-Bukhārī.
PlannedAl-Shamāʾil al-Muḥammadiyya
Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī
Reports describing the Prophet ﷺ himself — his appearance, his manner, how he ate, sat, slept and laughed. Read alongside the legal collections because it is the one that makes him a person rather than a source.
PlannedAdvanced
Dawra
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī
Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī
The most rigorously assembled hadith collection in the tradition, read in full in the final year — chapter headings included, since al-Bukhārī’s headings are themselves his legal argument.
PlannedṢaḥīḥ Muslim
Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj
The second of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, and the better-organised of them. Read alongside al-Bukhārī so the differences in their conditions become visible.
PlannedThe Four Sunan
Abū Dāwūd · al-Tirmidhī · al-Nasāʾī · Ibn Māja
The four collections arranged by legal chapter rather than by soundness. Where a student sees how the jurists actually derived rulings from reports of varying strength.
PlannedAl-Muwaṭṭaʾ
Imām Mālik ibn Anas
The earliest surviving collection, and as much a book of Madinan practice as of hadith. Read in the dawra because it is the oldest layer of the whole tradition.
PlannedSharḥ Maʿānī al-Āthār
Imām al-Ṭaḥāwī
How apparently conflicting reports are reconciled. Al-Ṭaḥāwī takes contradictions head on rather than around, which is why it closes the Ḥanafī dawra.
PlannedMuwaṭṭaʾ Muḥammad
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī
Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ as al-Shaybānī transmitted it, with his own notes where the Ḥanafīs differ. Read beside Mālik’s recension in the final year, so the disagreement between the two schools is visible on the page.
PlannedLessons
Al-Arbaʿūn al-Nawawiyya — the forty-two hadith of Imām al-Nawawī
- 01 Actions are by intentions ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb
- 02 Islām, īmān and iḥsān ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb
- 03 Islam is built upon five ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar
- 04 Creation in the womb, and the decree ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd
- 05 Whoever innovates in this affair of ours ʿĀʾisha
- 06 The lawful is clear and the unlawful is clear al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr
In the library
al-Arbaʿūn al-Nawawiyya — al-Sharbīnī edition
An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith
The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge · 1997
Matn al-Arbaʿūn al-Nawawiyya
Dār al-Minhāj, Jeddah / Beirut · 1445 AH / 2024 CE