Nawawi al-Bantani محمد نووي البنتني الجاوي

Imam Muhammad Nawawi al-Bantani al-Jawi rahimahullah (c. 1230-1314 AH / c. 1813-1897 CE) was one of the most prolific and influential Islamic scholars of the nineteenth century. Born in Banten, Java (present-day Indonesia), he traveled to Makka at a young age and settled there for most of his life, becoming a distinguished teacher in the Masjid al-Haram. He studied under leading scholars of Makka and Madina and mastered the traditional Islamic sciences. A towering figure of the Shafi'i madhhab, he authored more than one hundred Arabic works covering theology ('aqida), Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), the prophetic biography (sira), Sufism, and ethics. His texts became foundational teaching works in pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) across Southeast Asia and were taught in circles from Java to the Hejaz. He is universally recognized as the preeminent Muslim scholar of the Malay-Indonesian world of his era and continues to be studied and revered throughout the Muslim world.