Gardens of the Righteous — Page viii
viii. FOREWORD written by the Syrian Shafi'i scholar Muhyi ad-Din Abu Zakariyya' Yahya b. . Sharaf an-Nawawi (1233-78), who was the author of a large number of legal and biographical works, including a celebrated collection of forty well-known hadiths, the Kitab al-Arba'in (actually containing some forty-three traditions), much commented upon in the Muslim countries and translated into several. European languages. His Riyad as-Salihin is a concise collection of traditions, which has been printed on various occasions, e. g. at Mecca and Cairo, but never before translated into a western language. Hence the present translation by. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan will make available to those unversed in Arabic one of the most typical and widely-known collections of this type. . Manchester, 1974. C. E. BOSWORTH