visiting his lodge once or twice each week, taking him along on many of his journeys, keeping him constantly by his side (1), showing him deference, and consulting him. The shaykh would then advise him with his opinion and with accurate spiritual unveilings that conformed to reality, whether they were mercifully inspired or satanic, or occurred while he was seeking refuge (2).
Yet when he mingled with the public he became infatuated with certain daughters of the amirs, who did not veil themselves in his presence, and thus he fell into temptation. This is what generally happens when one mixes with people: whoever keeps their company is seldom safe from trial, especially when associating with women who have abandoned the veil (3); in such circumstances a servant of Allah is never completely secure.
When he fell into that sin he was interrogated before the sultan, Baysari, Qalawun, and the knight Aqṭay the atabeg, and he confessed (4). The sultan was on the verge of executing him, but he said, “Only a few days stand between you and me.” The sultan therefore ordered him imprisoned, and he remained in confinement for many years, from 671 to 676 AH. Earlier, in Jerusalem, he had demolished a church (5), slain its priest, and converted it into a lodge; we have already presented his biography above. He stayed in prison until he died on Thursday, the sixth of Muḥarram of this year. His body was brought out of the Citadel, entrusted to his relatives, and buried in a grave he had prepared within his lodge. He died in his mid-sixties. He used to disclose hidden matters to the sultan, and the domed shrine of Shaykh Khidr on the mountain west of al-Rabwa is attributed to him. He also maintained a lodge in the Holy Jerusalem.
Shaykh Muḥyi al-Din al-Nawawi (6) — Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf ibn [Miry] (7) ibn Ḥasan ibn Ḥusayn ibn Jumʿa ibn Ḥizām al-Ḥizāmi (8), the scholar, Muḥyi al-Din Abū Zakariyyā al-Nawawi (9), later al-Dimashqi the Shafiʿi, the leading authority of the school and the foremost jurist of his era — was born in Nawā, a village in the Ḥawrān region, in 631 AH. He arrived in Damascus in the year nine