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Hasan al-Basri

 
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(born 642, Medina, Arabia — died 728, Basra, Iraq) Muslim ascetic and major figure in early Islam. He took part in the conquest of eastern Iran as a young soldier. He then settled at Basra, and from 684 he was a popular preacher. He emphasized the practice of religious self-examination and asserted that true Muslims must live in a state of anxiety about their destiny after death. Rejecting determinism, he held that people are entirely responsible for their actions. Political opposition forced him into hiding (705 – 714), but he afterward lived openly in Basra. He is considered a founder of the two major schools of early Sunnite Islam, the Mu'tazilah and the Ash'ariyyah.

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Muslim scholar
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), also known as Imam Hasan al Basri, was a well-known Muslim theologian and scholar of Islam who was born at Medina from Persian[2][3] parents.

Contents

Biography

His father, Pirouz (Persian: پيروز, later called Abul 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 Umar, the Second Caliph, 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 they were ultimately wed and freed by the couple who received them. [4]

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). According to Abu Zur'a, at the age of 14 years Hasan became the murid of 'Ali. Thereafter Hasan migrated to Iraq.

Hasan did not take sides in the fitna of Ibn al-Zubayr.[5] In 700 CE he joined the camp of Ibn al-Ash'ath during his revolt,[6] as an amir.[7] Hasan is not known to have supported any Caliph after Abu Bakr,[8] but he was on decent terms with Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz.

After the revolt Hasan became a teacher in 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"), Wasil ibn Ata having broken all relations with his ancient Master.[9] Among Hasan's juristic students were the Imam Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani and also Humayd.[10]

Hasan married a woman of Ahl al-Kitab, (that is, he married a Jew or a Christian).[11] They had three sons: 'Ali, Muhammad, and Sa'id. Hasan was buried in Basra.

Beliefs

Under the reign of Caliph 'Abd al-Malik and his governor in Iraq al-Hajjaj, Hasan came to oppose the inherited caliphate of the Umayyads (r.660-750).[12]

Hasan held to a doctrine of human free will, called "Qadarism" by its enemies, as opposed to predestination.[13] In particular he refused to believe that a just God would predetermine a man to sin.[14] His stance on this upset his non-Mutazil pupils Ayyub and Humayd, and embarrassed later Sunnis; some, like Dawud b. Abi Hind, went so far as to forge anti-"Qadarite" opinions in Hasan's name.[15]

Hasan was a great supporter 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,[16] though he predated Sufism as a self-aware movement.[17] 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."[18]

Apocryphal Writings

He is associated with the authorship of several epistles, many of which are known to be forged.[19] Among the forgeries is an epistle to Abd al-Malik espousing human free will, first attested by Abd al-Jabbar (d. 415 / 1024);[20] which survives in three MSS.[21] This epistle, despite claiming "some of the ... best examples of Arabic linguistic prose style"[22], is based on the theology of al-Rassi's Kitab al-Radd and on the politics of the Zaydi Shi'a; that is, it comes from Abd al-Jabbar's circle if not from Abd al-Jabbar himself.[23]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ ::: 'ULUM AL-QUR'AN #3 - THE HISTORY OF TAFSIR :::
  2. ^ Michael G. Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, Gorgias Press LLC, 2006. Excerpt from pg 189: "the parents of Al-Hasan Al-Basri were lower-class Persians and came from this part of Iraq (Baladhuri, Futuh,344).
  3. ^ Christopher Melchert, "ḤASANBAṢRI, ABU SAʿID B. ABI’L-ḤASAN YASĀR", in Encyclopedia Iranica[1]
  4. ^ Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, Kitab Futuh al-Buldan, p.335.
  5. ^ Suleiman Mourad, Early Islam between myth and history (Brill, 2006), 35
  6. ^ Mourad, 35-40; quoting Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat and many others
  7. ^ Mourad, 39 from Yaqut Mu'jam al-udaba' , III, 1025
  8. ^ Mourad 43-4
  9. ^ Henry Corbin, "History of Islamic Phylosophy", chapter on Wasil ibn Ata and Mu'tazilism
  10. ^ Mourad, 172
  11. ^ Abu Bakr Jasas in his Tafseer Ahkaam al Qur'an Volume 1 page 333, Beirut edition [2]
  12. ^ Mourad 40-3
  13. ^ van Ess, "Kadarism", Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.; Mourad, passim
  14. ^ Mourad 170: citing Abd al-Jabbar, Fadl al-i'tizal, 225; Ibn al-Murtada, Tabaqat, 21; al-Sharif al-Murtada, Amali, 1.338-9; et al.
  15. ^ Mourad, 172-5
  16. ^ Hasan of Basra, from Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans, A.J. Arberry, London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983
  17. ^ at-Tasawwuf and al-Fuqaraa': Ibn Taimiyyah on Sufism and the Paupers, Majmoo’ al-Fataawaa by Ibn Taymiyyah
  18. ^ 1911 Britannica. References:
      • Imam Nawawi's Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1842-1847).
      • 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).
  19. ^ Mourad, 126-8; 194-5
  20. ^ Mourad, 178
  21. ^ Mourad, 179
  22. ^ John Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, 2003; note that he was writing prior to Mourad's work, when he also declares it "earliest"
  23. ^ Mourad, chapter 6, concluded p. 238-9

References


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