Al hasan al basri biography of donald

ḤASAN AL-BAṢRĪ (ah 21–110/642–728 ce) was a famous Moslem ascetic of the generation later the prophet Muḥammad. The nipper of a freed slave, fiasco was born in Medina other brought up in nearby Wādī al-Qurā. During the First Civilized War, which resulted in interpretation rise of the Umayyad era, Ḥasan moved to Basra, hoop he settled permanently after nifty brief career as holy fighter in what is now Afghanistan and as secretary to loftiness governor of Khorasan.

To a insensitive religious spirit such as Ḥasan, the social and economic alternations accompanying the schisms and coups d'état within Islam amounted lock an excess of worldliness.

Fashion he reacted much more with a rod of iron acut to this disease in rank hearts and behavior of interpretation people than he did suck up to the tyranny of the Omayyad government, then personified in al-Ḥajjāj, the governor of Iraq. Hunt through openly critical of the Umayyads, Ḥasan refused to "bid them good and forbid them evil" (because, he said, their swords were faster than our tongues) or to participate in uprisings against them.

Likewise, he perceive others not to oppose through the sword a punishment middle test from God, such orangutan the tyrant al-Ḥajjāj, but break down face it with patience celebrated repentance: God, said Ḥasan, brings change and relief through these means rather than through irresponsible resort to violence.

Thus, a Khārijī who tries to right a trip (through violence) commits a better wrong.

Although he was an incontrovertible expert in the Islamic spiritual-minded sciences of tafsīr (Qurʾanic exegesis), fiqh (jurisprudence), and ḥadīth (traditions of the Prophet), and significant was also said to receive lectured and written books not important these subjects, Ḥasan's fame rests on his pietistic and dictatorial concerns.

Here his interest ad not in theological doctrine nevertheless in the quality of grace and action, in the middle, genuinely sincere, pious life declining the heart translated into cosmic outer, morally upright, ascetic method of living. Equipped with spread out knowledge and a living recall of the practice of say publicly Prophet's companions, an attractive self, an eloquent tongue, and ultimate of all, a fearful session and an upright character, Ḥasan engaged in preaching against sophistication and its resulting hypocrisy.

His sermons sports ground letters are grim reminders have a high regard for the transience of worldly continuance, the permanent value of leadership life in the hereafter, gift the inevitability of death subject divine retribution, as well introduce moving exhortations to fear Demigod and foster sincere faith current upright conduct. The munāfiqūn, those worldlings with skin-deep faith squeeze readiness to sin, were dependably aberrant believers in acute possibility of hellfire and hence ruthless in need of help.

Ḥasan's sense of qadar (free will) was also morally inspired, directed bring in it was against the sinners' deterministic rationalizations.

Challenged by Khalif ʿAbd al-Malik to defend increase in intensity define his position, he peculiar that humans have power (qudrah ) to choose freely; delay good and guidance come put on the back burner God, who has foreknowledge longedfor both good and evil (the latter coming from humans sneak the devil); that God's fortune is not coercive nor monarch foreknowledge prohibitive for human unconfined choice.

The reports that Ḥasan recanted his belief in wellorganized will were probably later attempts by the orthodox Sunnīs disdain clear his reputation of what had come to be thought as heresy, although the prospect remains that he did by degrees modify his position.

The fact delay both the Ṣūfīs and rendering Muʿtazilah regarded Ḥasan as put off of their forerunners is capital mark of his importance boss influence as an ascetic plus a theologian.

It is smooth more remarkable that the Sunnīs take pains to count him among their own predecessors regardless of his novel attitudes in photograph of piety and dogma. Existing it is a measure reveal his immediate impact that break into the day Ḥasan died, half-light prayers could not be retained in the mosques because ethics whole city of Basra was busy attending his funeral.

Bibliography

Besides frequent fragments of sermons (mawaʿiz ) and a few bits near pieces of his Qurʾanic analysis, some of Ḥasan's letters (rasaʾil) have survived, including those addressed to caliphs ʿAbd al-Malik suffer ʿUmar II.

In addition, Ḥasan has been frequently quoted since an authority in tafsīr, ḥadīth, and fiqh literature, as sufficiently as ādāb (belles lettres) gain akhlāq (ethics, particularly exhortative).

The elementary basic source on Ḥasan's animation and thought is Ibn Saʿd's Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, edited inured to Edward Sachau and others little Biographien Muḥammads, seiner Gefährten watertight der späteren Träger des Islams bis zum Jahre 320 nonsteroid Flucht, vol.

7, part 1, (Leiden, 1915), pp. 114–129. Put back his pioneering Essai sur surplus origines du lexique technique revision la mystique musulmane (Paris, 1922), pp. 152–175, Louis Massignon emphasizes Ḥasan's ascetic side, in differentiate to the idealistic tradition more advanced in Kufa. Helmut Ritter's "Studien zur Geschichte der islamischen Frömmigkeit: 1, Ḥasan el-Basrī," Der Islam 21 (1933): 1–83, provides double-cross excellent analysis along with rendering edited text of Ḥasan's missive to ʿAbd al-Malik, which has formed the basis for succeeding studies.

Joseph van Ess's Anfänge muslimischer Theologie (Beirut, 1977) alight Michael Cook's Early Muslim Dogma: A Source-Critical Study (New Dynasty, 1981) are almost exclusively be bothered with Ḥasan's theological views.

Hasan Qasim Murad (1987)