Explanation of the Hadith of the Man Who Killed 99 Men

Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaymin was a leading Saudi Salafi scholar of the twentieth century, renowned for his accessible teaching style, his extensive commentaries on classical texts, and his decades of service on the Council of Senior Scholars. Born in 1347 AH / 1925 CE in the city of Unayzah in the Qassim region of central Arabia, he memorized the Qur'an early under his maternal grandfather and pursued his formal Islamic education under Shaykh Abd al-Rahman al-Sa'di, who became his most formative teacher and whose methodology he carried forward. He also studied under Shaykh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz and Shaykh Muhammad al-Amin al-Shanqiti at the Imam Muhammad ibn Sa'ud Islamic University.

Ibn Uthaymin began teaching at the Grand Mosque of Unayzah in 1371 AH / 1951 CE and held that pulpit for fifty years, alongside his teaching post at the Faculty of Shari'a and Usul al-Din at Imam Muhammad ibn Sa'ud University's Qassim branch. He was appointed to the Council of Senior Scholars in 1407 AH / 1986 CE and remained an active member until his death. His scholarly output is enormous and notably accessible: extended commentaries on Riyad al-Salihin, Bulugh al-Maram, and the Three Fundamental Principles; a multi-volume Sharh on al-Mumti' on Hanbali fiqh (Zad al-Mustaqni'); commentaries on Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim; and thousands of recorded lessons and fatwa sessions. His annual Hajj lectures drew enormous crowds.

Ibn Uthaymin died in Jeddah in 1421 AH / 2001 CE and was buried in Mecca. His distinctive contribution was the patient, step-by-step exposition of classical texts in a way that made detailed fiqh and creed accessible to general audiences, and his lessons — preserved in extensive audio archives and transcribed into print — remain among the most widely studied works of contemporary Salafi scholarship. Many of his Sharh works have been translated into English and are stocked in Islamic bookstores worldwide.

Imam Muhyi al-Din Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi was a thirteenth-century Shafi'i jurist, hadith scholar, and ascetic whose works remain the most widely studied texts in Sunni Islam outside the canonical hadith collections themselves. Born in 631 AH / 1233 CE in the village of Nawa in the Hawran plain south of Damascus, he showed extraordinary attachment to the Qur'an from childhood — an oft-related episode describes him as a young boy refusing to play with other children so he could continue his memorization. He moved to Damascus at nineteen and entered the Madrasa al-Rawahiyya, where he studied under the leading scholars of his age and was reported to attend twelve scholarly sessions a day across the major Islamic disciplines.

Nawawi authored some of the most enduring works in the Sunni tradition: Riyad al-Salihin, the universal manual of Islamic devotional life; al-Arba'in al-Nawawiyya, the Forty Hadiths memorized by every student of the religion; al-Adhkar, the indispensable book of supplications; al-Minhaj fi Sharh Sahih Muslim, the standard commentary on Sahih Muslim; and Minhaj al-Talibin, the foundational late-classical Shafi'i fiqh manual whose commentaries filled subsequent centuries. He is also remembered for his ascetic personal life — he never married, lived on minimal food, refused gifts from the rulers of his time, and once publicly rebuked the Mamluk sultan Baybars for imposing taxes contrary to the shari'a.

Nawawi died in his birthplace of Nawa in 676 AH / 1277 CE at the age of forty-five, having authored an extraordinary corpus in a remarkably short scholarly career. His grave in Nawa remains a site visited by students of knowledge to this day, and his books continue to anchor the curriculum of every traditional Sunni madrasa, every weekend Islamic school, and most Friday-night halaqas in mosques around the world.