Death of Imam al-Nawawī

Imam al-Nawawī — the jurist and ḥadīth scholar of Damascus, author of Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn and al-Arbaʿīn, died at Nawā aged 45.

He taught at Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya in Damascus for years without taking its salary, lived on what his father sent from the village, and wrote at a pace that startled his biographers: the Minhāj in fiqh, the commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, al-Adhkār, and the forty ḥadīth that became the most memorised list in the tradition.

Late in 676 he returned books he had borrowed, visited his teachers' graves, and went home to Nawā, where he died on the night of 24 Rajab. The scholars of Damascus prayed over him in absentia; his grave in Nawā is marked to this day.