“Sharh Arba'in an-Nawawi”

Before you is a theological manuscript studied for centuries in the madrasas of Bukhara. It is a commentary on Imam al-Nawawi’s famous “Forty Hadiths,” one of the best-known texts of the Sunni Islamic tradition.
The most striking feature of this copy is immediately visible on the open pages. The margins are almost entirely filled with notes, explanations, and scholarly remarks. Such annotations were known as “hashiya.” Teachers and students added them over time, transforming the manuscript into a living dialogue between generations of scholars.
The main text is written in Arabic, yet the calligrapher employed the elegant nasta‘liq script, especially characteristic of the book culture of Mawarannahr. This demonstrates the remarkable mastery of Bukharan calligraphers.
The manuscript was copied in 1682 by a calligrapher from Balkh, although the original work dates back to the Shaybanid era of the sixteenth century. Even after more than a century, Kohistani’s commentary remained an essential educational text.
This manuscript preserves not only the hadith tradition itself, but also the memory of centuries of Islamic scholarship in Central Asia.