Hasan al-Basri

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Muslim Sufi
Name: al-Hasan al-Basri
Title:
Birth: 642[citation needed]
Death: 110 AH (728–729) [1] or 737[citation needed]
Influenced: Amr Ibn Ubayd
Wasil ibn Ata
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 Muslim theologian and scholar of Islam who was born at Medina from Persian parents.

[edit] Biography

His father, Pirouz (Persian: پيروز, later called Abol Hasan, or Hasan's Father, in Arabic), was a Persian landowner (دهگان) in a village of Khuzestan who was enslaved during a military campaign of the Second Caliph, Umar, and taken back to Medina. In the course of dividing spoils of war, Pirouz, along with a damsel from his own village, was given to Umm Salama, a wife of Muhammad. Umm Salama gifted both to one of her close relatives where both were ultimately wed and freed by the couple who received them. [2] 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 followers were Amr Ibn Ubayd (d.761) and Wasil ibn Ata (d.749), the founder of the Mu'tazilites - which name derives from Arabic verb i'tizàl ("to part from", "to separate from"), having Wasil ibn Ata broken all relations he had with his ancient Master (see Henry Corbin, "History of Islamic Phylosophy", chapter on Wasil ibn Ata and Mu'tazilism).

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.[citation needed] Al-Basri is also held in high regard by the Sufis, for his asceticism;[3] however, al-Basri was himself not actually a practitioner of Sufism.[4]

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."[citation needed] 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.[5]

He was married to a woman of Ahl al-Kitab [6]

[edit] See also

  • Nasr Abu Zayd
  • Islam
  • 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.
  • Imam Nawawi's Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1842-1847).
  • Early Islam Between Myth and History: Al-Hasan Al-Baṣrī (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in the Formation of Classical Islamic Scholarship, by Sulaiman Ali Mourad, Brill, 2005

[edit] References

  1. ^ ::: 'ULUM AL-QUR'AN #3 - THE HISTORY OF TAFSIR :::
  2. ^ Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, Kitab_Futuh_al-Buldan, p.335.
  3. ^ Hasan of Basra, from Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans, A.J. Arberry, London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983
  4. ^ at-Tasawwuf and al-Fuqaraa': Ibn Taimiyyah on Sufism and the Paupers, Majmoo’ al-Fataawaa by Ibn Taymiyyah
  5. ^ John Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, 2003
  6. ^ Abu Bakr Jasas in his Tafseer Ahkaam al Qur'an Volume 1 page 333, Beirut edition [1]