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Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. Yasār al-Baṣrī (21–110/642–728), famously known as al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī or al-Ḥasan b. Abī l-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, was one of the most celebrated Successors (tābiʿūn) of the Companions of Muḥammad and enjoyed an acclaimed scholarly career and an even more remarkable posthumous legacy in Islamic scholarship. Al-Ḥasan was probably born in Medina. His mother was said to have been a maid to Umm Salama, one of Muḥammad’s widows. His father, who hailed from southern Iraq, was captured and sold into slavery at the time of the conquests…

The Ibn ʿAsākir family (Banū ʿAsākir) was prominent in mediaeval Damascus. It produced several notable Shāfiʿī scholars who occupied prestigious scholarly and judicial positions in Damascus and Syria and shaped intellectual and religious life there between the fifth/eleventh and eighth/fourteenth centuries. Even though each male member of the family was known by the name of Ibn ʿAsākir (along with an honorific peculiar to each), the reference when used on its own in mediaeval literature refers inva…

Abū Saʿd al-Muḥassin b. Muḥammad b. Karāma al-Jishumī, known as al-Ḥākim al-Jishumī (d. 494/1101), was a Muʿtazilī theologian, Ḥanafī jurist, and exegete of the Qurʾān. Al-Jishumī was born in 413/1022 in the town of Jishum, located near Bayhaq in western Khurāsān. He came from a family that traced its lineage back to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) through his son Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (d. 81/700). Al-Jishumī started his religious education in Jishum and moved around Khurāsān to further his command of several fields. He studied ḥadīth and Muʿtazilī theology with Abū Ḥāmid al-Naj…

Abū ʿUmar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ḥafṣ, known as Ibn al-Khallāl al-Baṣrī (b. before 300/912, d. after 377/988), was a Muʿtazilī scholar and judge. He was born in Basra, where he probably began his education in Muʿtazilī thought under the theologian Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Ṣaymarī (d. 315/927). He then moved to Baghdad and became the disciple of Ibn al-Ikhshīd (d. 326/938), who was the leading figure of one of the branches of the Muʿtazila in the city that came to be known as the Ikhsīdid branch. In addition to theology, Ibn al-Khallāl studied Shāfiʿī law (fiqh) with Ibn al-Ikhshīd and became ch…