Hasan al-Basri
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| <region> scholar Medieval era |
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|---|---|
| Name: | Hasan al-Basri |
| Birth: | 642 [citation needed] |
| Death: | 110 AH (728–729 CE) [1] or 737 [citation needed] |
| School/tradition: | |
| Influences: | |
| Influenced: | |
| The Eight Ascetics |
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al-Hasan al-Basri (Arabic:الحسن البصري) (Abu Sa'id al-Hasan ibn Abi-l-Hasan Yasar al-Basri), (642 - 728 or 737), was a well-known Arab theologian and scholar of Islam who was born at Medina.
[edit] Life & Works
His father was a freedman of Zayd ibn Thabit, one of the Ansar (Helpers of the Prophet), his mother a client of Umm Salama, a wife of the Prophet Muhammad (d.632). Tradition says that Umm Salama often nursed Hasan in his infancy. He was thus one of the Tabi'een (i.e. of the generation that succeeded the Sahabah). He became a teacher of Basra (Iraq) and founded a madrasa (school) there. Among his many pupils were Amr Ibn Ubayd (d.761) and Wasil ibn Ata (d.749), the founder of the Mu'tazilites.
He himself was a great supporter of orthodoxy and the most important representative of asceticism in the time of its first development. According to him, fear is the basis of morality, and sadness the characteristic of his religion. Life is only a pilgrimage, and comfort must be denied to subdue the passions. Al-Basri is also held in high regard by the Sufis, for his asceticism and subtle directions relating to the science of practical religion (ilm-i mu'amalat).[2]
Many writers testify to the purity of his life and to his excelling in the virtues of Muhammad's own companions. He was "as if he were in the other world." In politics, too, he adhered to the earliest principles of Islam, being strictly opposed to the inherited caliphate of the Umayyads (r.661-750) and a believer in the election of the caliph. However, despite his critical position concerning the Umayyads, he did not approve of rebellion against tyrannical rule. His sermons contain some of the earliest and best examples of Arabic linguistic prose style.[3]
He was married to a woman of Ahl al-Kitab [4]
[edit] See also
- Islam
- Qadr (doctrine)
- Sufism
- Abdul Waahid Bin Zaid
- Reinhart Dozy, Essai sur l'histoire de l'islamisme, pp. 201 sqq. (Leiden and Paris, 1879)
- Alfred von Kremer, Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams , p. 5 seq.
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, pp. 225-227 (London, 1907).
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] References
Prose contains specific citations in source text which may be viewed in edit mode.
- ^ http://archive.muslimuzbekistan.com/eng/islam/2002/07/q18072002.html
- ^ Hasan of Basra, from Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans, A.J. Arberry, London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983
- ^ John Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, 2003
- ^ Abu Bakr Jasas in his Tafseer Ahkaam al Qur'an Volume 1 page 333, Beirut edition [1]
also: His life is given in Imam Nawawi's Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1842-1847).
