Al-Nawawi

[11] Despite this, he authored numerous and lengthy works ranging from hadith, to theology, biography, and jurisprudence that are still read to this day.

[12] Al-Nawawi, along with Abu al-Qasim al-Rafi'i, are leading jurists of the earlier classical age, known by the Shafi'i school as the Two Shaykhs (al-Shaykhayn).

Yasin bin Yusuf Marakashi, says: "I saw Imam Nawawi at Nawa when he was a youth of ten years of age.

[15] During his stay at Damascus, he studied from more than twenty teachers[16][17] who were regarded as masters and authority of their subject field and disciplines they taught.

The first is to have faith in it without discussing its meaning, while believing of Allah Most High that "there is nothing whatsoever like unto Him" (Qur'an 42:11), and that He is exalted above having any of the attributes of His creatures.

The second is to figuratively explain it in a fitting way, scholars who hold this position adducing that the point of the hadith was to test the slave girl: Was she a monotheist, who affirmed that the Creator, the Disposer, the Doer, is Allah alone and that He is the one called upon when a person making supplication (du'a) faces the sky--just as those performing the prayer (salat) face the Kaaba, since the sky is the qibla of those who supplicate, as the Kaaba is the qibla of those who perform the prayer--or was she a worshipper of the idols which they placed in front of themselves?

"[23]Sheikh Navaid Aziz stated a popular tale of when Al-Nawawi addressed Sultan Baybars when the latter wanted the ulama to issue a fatwa that decreed that the waqf be collected solely for the ruler, despite originally being meant for the people.

[21] In the last third of the night of Wednesday, 25 Rajab 676 AH, corresponding to 22 December, 1277 AD, Al-Nawawi passed away at relatively young age of 45.

[21] Ulama's praise him for 3 characteristics: In 2015, during the ongoing Syrian Civil War, his tomb was demolished by rebels linked to Al Nusra.