Hasan al-Basri (Arabic:حسن البسری) (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.

Life & Works

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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).Hasan of Basra, from Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans, A.J. Arberry, London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983

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.John Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, 2003

Notes

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References

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His life is given in Imam Nawawi's Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1842-1847).

See also

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• 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).

642 births | 8th century deaths | Arab writers | Sufis

Al Hasan Al Bashri | Хасан аль-Басри | Hasan al-Basri