Muhammad Najib al-Muti'i

Shaykh Muhammad Najib al-Muti'i was a Shafi'i jurist and teacher in Cairo, whom Abu Ishaq al-Heweny names as the first of his teachers and introduces as the author of «Takmilat al-Majmu'», the completion of al-Nawawi's «al-Majmu' Sharh al-Muhadhdhab». ^{1 2}

Al-Heweny relates that a friend at the Faculty of Engineering told him of Shaykh al-Muti'i's lesson near the faculty, in the Malaysian students' house next to the Faculty of Engineering on Abduh Pasha Square in Abbasiyya, and that he began attending his circles as a university student; he calls this the "first phase" of his studies. ^{3 4 5 1} He says al-Muti'i taught four books: Sahih al-Bukhari, «Ihya' Ulum al-Din», «al-Ashbah wa-l-Naza'ir» and «al-Majmu' Sharh al-Muhadhdhab». ¹ He mentions that al-Muti'i used to say that whoever read the completion beside al-Nawawi's text would find no difference, as if al-Nawawi had written it; that al-Subki had written a portion and no one had continued it until al-Muti'i finished it; and that he read «al-Majmu'» until al-Nawawi's style entered his blood. ^{2 6} He relates that a dispute arose over the authorship of the completion and that al-Muti'i established it as his own after lawsuits. ⁷

He tells how al-Muti'i taught, following al-Nawawi, that someone who had abandoned the prayer for years must make it up; al-Heweny said that some scholars held it is not made up, and when asked who, he said: al-Albani; the shaykh's reply made the room laugh, and after that the shaykh ignored his raised hand. ^{8 9 10} He relates that he asked him whether to go down to prostration on the hands or on the knees, which was then a mark among the young, and al-Muti'i said he had gone down on his knees as a young man and went down on his hands as an old one. ^{11 12} He says al-Muti'i explained al-Bukhari with discussion of the chains, that he took a fair share of al-Bukhari and «al-Majmu'» from him, and that he did not complete the four books because al-Muti'i emigrated to Sudan after the events of Sadat's time. ^{13 14}