In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Publisher’s Foreword

All praise is due to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and invoke blessings upon Muhammad, his family, and his companions.

To proceed: Some time ago—while the eminent hadith scholar Shaykh Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī was working at al-Maktab al-Islāmī in 1393 AH—I asked him to prepare a critical edition of the blessed and beneficial book “Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn,” authored by Imām al-Nawawī (may Allah envelop him in His mercy).

I provided Shaykh Nāṣir al-Dīn with whatever manuscripts, printed copies, and commentaries I had at hand. He—may Allah preserve him—undertook the task, using the edition prepared by Shaykh Riḍwān Muḥammad Riḍwān (may Allah have mercy on him) as the primary basis for his work. Owing to circumstances he explained to me, the project stretched on until 1398 AH, when he brought me Shaykh Riḍwān’s edition and requested that we reproduce it in offset form, adding his own annotations and a new introduction. He was insistent on publishing it in exactly that manner, regarding the book as his own undertaking and noting that most of the work had been done outside his official hours at the office.

And so it was: we paid him the fee he requested and deemed appropriate, after which our proofreading department prepared the indexes that the Shaykh had apologized for not compiling himself.