Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî

Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî or Hassûnah Ibn “Abd Allâh Year-Nawâwî Al-Hanafî , called the valorous Imâm , (born in 1839, in the village of Nawây, in the governorship of Asyout, in High-Egypt - died the March 18th 1925), was a monk and Egyptian lawyer , which was Grand Imâm ( Shuyukh ) or vice-chancellor of the Mosquée Al-Azhar of 1895 with 1899, then of 1907 with 1909, and Grand Mufti of Egypt of 1895 with 1899.

Biography

Childhood and Youth

Like all the children of his village, the young person Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî was sent by his father to the Koranic school, where as of his early childhood, he studied the Coran thoroughly and memorized it. He came then to the Cairo to continue his studies in the prestigious Al-Azhar mosque-university - the oldest university of the world (older than Oxford or Cambridge) - where he accepted the teaching of large professors as sheik Al-Imbâbî, sheik `Abd Ar-Rahmân Al-Bahrâwî and sheik `Alî Khalîl Al-Asyûtî.

There, he studied the Jurisprudence, the Hadith, the Exégèse, the Linguistique, the Grammaire, the Rhétorique and other disciplines religious and literary. At that time, the Al-Azhar school program did not leave the framework of these disciplines. There was neither Histoire, neither Géographie, neither Physique, neither Chimie, neither Mathématiques, nor none of these sciences which one then described as “sciences of the laymen”.

After having taken down with Al-Azhar its diploma of Al `Âlamiyyah, it started a career of teacher, and have regard to its vast knowledge, it was named professor of Fiqh ( Islamic jurisprudence ) to the Faculté of Dâr Al `Ulûm ( Maison of Sciences ) and to the Faculty of Law. He in parallel exerted functions of magistrate to the supreme Islamic Cour ( Al-Mahkamah Ash-Shar `iyyah ). In 1894, it was called with the function of assistant of the vice-chancellor ( wakîl ) of Al-Azhar.

Large Al-Azhar Imâm

Following the resignation, for health reasons, of sheik Al-Imbâbî of his functions of Large Imâm of Al-Azhar, Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî by a royal decree of July 1st 1895 was named to succeed to him. It took up duty shortly after creation, by the law of the January 3rd 1895, of a board of directors ( Majlis Al-Idarah ) intended to return the more democratic Al-Azhar administration.

Its first task was to undertake a reform of the somewhat sclerosed teaching which one lavished on Al-Azhar. It obtained government of Nubar Pasha an increase in the budget for the restoration of the mosque and the university. A commission was installation, that it chaired, to establish an equitable statute for the employees and to find compensations for the professors and the employees, penalized by certain governmental measures.

July 1st 1896, one year day for day after its taking up the duties, was promulgated an important law bearing its name, which confirmed the position of the vice-chancellor as a chairman of the board and a chief of the executive of the mosque and the university.

This same law fixed the admission requirements of the students at Al-Azhar. To be acceptable, a boy was:

to be old of fifteen years at least,
to have memorized at least half of Coran; in the absence of a complete memorizing,
and knowledge lira and to write.

This law also regulated the studies. Initially it defined the objects of study ( Al-maqasid ), which included/understood the Théologie, religious ethics, right, origins of the law, the comment and the tradition. In the second place, she proposed the means of study ( Al-wasa' it ), including two kinds of grammar (called Al-nahw and Al-sarf ), three kinds of rhetoric ( Al-ma' ani , Al-bayan and Al-badi ), logic, the technical terms of the tradition ( mustalah Al-hadith ), the arithmetic one, the algebra, the prosody ( Al-arud ) and poetry ( Al-qawafi ). The students were authorized to study other matters, such as the Islamic history, the composition, elocution, linguistics, the literature and the elementary geometry. The law, moreover, distributed the studies in two cycles. First a eight years cycle - at the conclusion which the student was to control a minimum of eight linguistic and religious disciplines - was sanctioned by a diploma ( Al-shahadah Al-ahliyah ) delivered by a jury of three professors, chaired by the Al-Azhar vice-chancellor. The students having succeeded in passing this course successfully could continue their studies in second cycle or choose to exert the function of preacher or imâm in the mosques. The studies of second cycle were sanctioned - after four years additional - by the diploma of Al `Âlamiyyah, crowning twelve years of studies and giving the right to the most brilliant students to teach within Al-Azhar.

To prevent the infiltration of ideas heretics in the spirits of the students, it was prohibited to them, during the first four years, of recourit to gloses ( Al-taqarir ) or to explanatory notes ( Al-hawashi ), which they could use thereafter only with the authorization of the Board of directors of the university.

Another shutter of this law aimed to the improvement of the living conditions of the students by housing construction to the standards of hygiene and by the attribution of financial aids.

Large Mufti of Egypt

The November 28th 1895, following the death of the Large Mufti of Egypt, sheik Al-Mahdî, sheik Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî was selected to succeed to him, and, preserving its functions at Al-Azhar, it thus cumulated the two religious stations most important of Egypt. During its mandate of Mufti, it returned nearly 287 Fatwa S.

Four years after his taking of to the Al-Azhar head, the sheik entered in conflict with the Khedive, which wished to make sit two civil judges at the supreme Islamic Court among the other magistrates of this court. In its capacity as deputy, it fought a private bill aiming at implementing this project, at the time of a passionate debate at the Parliament, which opposed it to the Prime Minister Mustafâ Pasha Fahmî. In anger, it left the Parliament in sign of protest. The Khedive Abbas II proposed to him to bring the amendments that it wished with the text of the law, in order to make it acceptable to the eyes of the Islamic law. But the sheik persisted in his refusal by making the point that “the supreme Islamic Court replaces the Mufti in the majority of his decisions. No amendment of this bill can make it in conformity with the Islamic law since a civil magistrate does not fill the requirements to be a mufti”. Its intransigence was worth to him to be dislocated of all its functions the May 22nd 1899.

His/her cousin, sheik `Abd Ar-Rahmân Qutb Year-Nawâwî was selected to succeed to him the Al-Azhar head, while sheik Muhammad `Abduh became Mufti.

Back in favor

The February 10th 1907, Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî was restored at the station of Large Al-Azhar Imâm and took again its reform project of teaching. A new law, promulgated the March 5th 1908, distributes the material taught in three groups: the religious sciences, the Arab Language and Mathematical. It introduced moreover new disciplines such as the Sîrah, the procedures legal, the civil legislation, the Legal system, the administration, the goods of mortmain, the education, the Pédagogie, calculation, the Algèbre and the Géométrie, as well as the Géographie, hygiene and health. Some of these disciplines had already been taught with Al-Azhar before falling into the lapse of memory at the time of the decline of the Muslim world.

This same law also divided the studies into three four years cycles, sanctioned each one by a diploma: the elementary diploma, the secondary diploma and the higher diploma of the `Âlamiyyah, which only which conferred on its holder the right to teach with Al-Azhar and to occupy a station of preacher or Imam in the mosques.

One of the major contributions of sheik Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî was to join together in a large library the multitude of works scattered in the libraries of the mosques and the Al-Azhar houses, of which certain very rare works. It could thus save a treasure of rare parchments. The Al-Azhar library (Al-Maktabah Al-Azhariyyah Al “Âmiriyyah), which it thus contributed to found, has, nowadays the second larger collection of parchments of Egypt after Dâr Al-Kutub, the Egyptian national library.

Once again, there were frictions, largely caused by the interference of the Khedive. In 1909, noting that the reform which he had undertaken did not advance at the rate/rhythm which it would have wished, because of the brakes put by the capacity and by certain elements of the institution, sheik Hassûnah Year-Nawâwî resigned and withdrew himself at his place, receiving his friends and his disciples until his death, the March 18th 1925.

He wrote many works, among which an Islamic treaty of Jurisprudence in two volumes ( Sullam Al-Mustarshidîn fî Ahkâm Al-Fiqh bog manganese-DIN ), which enjoys a great notoriety.

Random links: