(4) Islamic World: Notable Scholars: Writers, Poets, Philosophers, Theologians, Scientists, Mathematicians, Inventors, Merchants, Explorer-Journalists, etc. (and their Most Famous Works and Notable Biographical Information and Information about their Works and Notable Biographical Information) and Notable Works of Culture and Academia

Both Religious and Non-Religious

699 - 748 - Wasil ibn-Ata (All Facts)

• Founder of Mu’tazilism, a school of Islamic theology that emphasized rationality / rationalism

700s - 759 - Ibn al-Muqaffa (All Facts)

• Writer during the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates

• Considered the greatest contemporary writer of prose

  • He was known for his legal and philosophical treatises

• He was commissioned by Caliph al-Mansur to write an “aman” (pardon) to a rebellious noble

  • However, he had surrounded the Caliph’s promise with so many solemn oaths that the Caliph became outraged and ordered the namesake writer to be executed

• He was tortured to death on the orders of Caliph al-Mansur of the Abbasid Caliphate

  • Under the supervision of the governor of Basra, a longtime enemy of his, his limbs were cut off before he was thrown into a burning oven still alive

700s - 759 - Ibn al-Muqaffa: Kalia wa Dimna (All Facts)

• Popular Islamic collection of Indian fables

731 - 788 - Abd al-Rahman (All Facts)

• Islamic poet who wrote poems lamenting the loss of Syria to the Abbasid Caliphate

756 - 814 - Abu Nuwas (All Facts)

• Arab-Muslim poet during the Abbasid Caliphate

• He was most famous for his role in Arabic literature’s strong tradition of lyrical desert poetry

• His lyrics of his poems reflected the town life of the caliphate

• His works appear several times in One Thousand and One Nights

700s - 816 - Jabir ibn-Hayyan (All Facts)

• He was the “Father of Arabic Chemistry”

• He left evidence of a systematic approach to chemistry, relatively uncluttered by alchemical superstitions

  • For example, he describe the manufacture of nitric acid and how it may be used in extracting silver and gold from their ores or salts

748 - 828 - Abu al-Atahiya (All Facts)

• Arab-Muslim poet during the Abbasid Caliphate

• His religious poetry was influenced by Islam

795 - 838 - Babak Khorramdin (All Facts)

• He was an Iranian revolutionary leaders of the Iranian religious and social freedom movement in northwestern Persia called the Khorram-Dinan, which opposed the Abbasid Caliphate

800s - 850 - Al-Farghani: Elements (All Facts)

• Summary of Ptolemaic astronomy

• Work which was studied throughout Europe until the 1600s

807 - 845 - Abu Tammam (All Facts)

• Arab-Muslim Poet during the Abbasid Caliphate

• He is known for his edition of the fine “Hamasu” anthology

780 - 850 - Al-Khwarizmi (All Facts)

• Islamic Mathematician during the Abbasid Caliphate

• He wrote in Arabic and worked in Baghdad

  • He may have been Persian by birth

• He wrote the first known astronomical tables

• He wrote the first known work on arithmetic, which concluded the calculation of square roots

• He introduced Hindu numerals to the Islamic world

• His life work demonstrated how far ahead of Christendom were the intellectual achievements of the Islamic World

780 - 850 - Al-Khwarizmi: The Calculation of Integration and Equation / “Hisab al-Jabr W-al-Muqabalah” (All Facts)

• Work which introduced Algebra to the world, first through the Islamic World and later to Europe

• Work which demonstrated how far ahead of Christendom were the intellectual achievements of the Islamic World

• Work which was based on the earlier algebraic techniques of the Greeks and Indians

780 - 855 - Ahmad ibn-Hanbal (All Facts)

• Jurist and Theologian under the Abbasid Caliphate

• He fiercely opposed Mu'tazilism, accusing Caliph Al-Mamun who espoused their doctrines of altering God’s word

• He founded his namesake school of Sunni jurisprudence, one of the four rites of Islam which was based on his life’s work, the most orthodox of the four schools of Sunni Islamic law

  • He and his school held that the Quran as interpreted by the Islamic community contains the answers to all moral questions

• He was imprisoned for refusing to accept Mu’tazilism and its rationalist doctrines

776 - 869 - Al-Jahiz (All Facts)

• Islamic Writer during the Abbasid Caliphate

• He wrote works on history, sex, and literature

• His most famous is the “Book of the Misers”

801 - 873 - Al-Kindi (All Facts)

• Islamic Polymath during the Abbasid Caliphate

  • He was notably a scientist and philosopher

  • He was nicknamed “The Philosopher of the Arabs”

  • His thinking was considered too radical for his time under Al-Mutawakkil of the Abbasid Caliphate

    • Amongst intellectuals, however, he was regarded as a master of compromise who had done more than anyone to incorporate classical thought into Islam

• He held that “true knowledge” can come from secular thinkers as well as prophets (he had declared his respect for the Great Prophet Mohammed)

• He pioneered the translation of Greek works into Arabic

• He encourage the use of experiments to solve scientific problems

• He sought new concepts of the nature of motion and heat

• He objected to alchemical and Aristotelian dogmas

• His works were read by Arab Muslim thinkers everywhere despite the state’s displeasure with his ideas

801 - 873 - Al-Kindi: On the First Philosophy (All Facts)

• Work inspired by Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”

858 - 922 - Al-Hallaj (All Facts)

• Persian Sufi Mystic, Writer, and Teacher during the Abbasid Caliphate

• He was born in a small village in southern Persia, where he was raised as a wool carder

• He became a travelling preacher, where he preached in Persia, Turkestan, and India

  • He also made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj)

• He adapted Sufism, advocating for the pursuit of ecstasy through a personal fusion with God

  • From this belief he is famous for having said “I am the truth”

  • He also stated that “I am the One that I love, and the one that I love is me. We are two spirits and one body”

• His most famous work was a treatise called “Kitab al-Tawasin” and he also compiled his namesake “Diwan”

• He was condemned as a heretic

  • Civil authorities saw him as a potential rabble-rouser, particularly since he supported caliphal reform

• He was arrested once but escaped and hid in Susa

• He was arrested again but could not escape and was imprisoned

• He was then sentenced to death after a long trial in which he was flogged, mutilated, tied to a gibbet, and beheaded

  • He thus died by execution in this gruesome public ceremony

  • His body was burnt and his ashes were scattered in the Tigris River

• He thus became the main martyr for Sufism

864 - 935 - Abu Bakr al-Razi (All Facts)

• Persian physician, philosopher and chemist during the Abbasid Caliphate

• In medicine,

  • He was regarded as the greatest doctor in the world at the time

    • He was in heavy demand at the caliph’s court in Baghdad and other capitals of the Islamic world

    • Because of how good of a doctor he was, many forgave his heretical or radical views

  • He wrote / compiled a medical encyclopedia, which brought together for the first time the best of both Arab and Greek medicine

  • He wrote a treatise on smallpox and measles

• In chemistry,

  • He exposed the difference between magical spells and genuine remedies

    • This had won him some support of his fellow radical Aristotelians

  • He based his work on experiments

• In philosophy,

  • He studied and admired Plato

    • This angered both Islamic conservatives and fellow scholarly radicals that favored Aristotle instead

• He had a reputation as a heretic

• He died peacefully in Khurasan

800s - 898 - Al-Yaqibi (All Facts)

• Arab-Muslim historian during the Abbasid Caliphate who wrote of the vast cities in Ethiopia that featured colonies of Arab-Muslims, with their numbers growing every year

  • He notes that they were not the first Muslims in Ethiopia as it was Ethiopia which gave refuge to the Great Prophet Mohammed’s followers after they had been driven from Arabia in the infancy of Islam

800s - 900s - One Thousand and One Nights / “The Arabian Nights” / “Hazar Afsanah” (All Facts)

• Collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the reign of the Abbasid Caliphate (Islamic Golden Age)

  • Its stories drew on not just Islamic culture but also on Persian, Syrian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indian culture

• Collection centralized by one main “framing” story about an unhappy king who kills each one of his new wives every morning of each marriage until his wife Scheherazade comes along and tells him a new and enthralling tale every night which keeps him happy and prevents him from wanting to kill her also

• Included great stories all narrated by the same person, Scheherazade, like

  • Aladdin

  • Sinbad the Sailor

  • Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

• It may have been compiled by a man named Abu Abd Allah, although there was no single author since it was a collection

• It is important to note that although Sinbad the Sailor was published in the original collection, the famous tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves were not until centuries after the original collection was published

870 - 950 - Al-Farabi (All Facts)

• Turkic Muslim Philosopher, Musician, Physician, Mathematician, and Scientist during the Abbasid Caliphate

• He

  • was educated at Baghdad

  • flourished in the court of Saif-al-Sawlah al-Hamdani at Aleppo in Syria

• His philosophy mixed Platonism and Aristotelianism of Greek thought with Islamic Sufism

• He wrote many works on politics, metaphysics, and psychology including commentaries on Greek thinkers

• His idea of the ideal city organized like the human body, with the heart as sovereign and perfect morally and intellectually was inspired by Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics

915 - 965 - Al-Mutanabbi (All Facts)

• Poet during the Abbasid Caliphate

• As a young man, he was involved as a young man in a Qarmatian rebellion in Syria

  • After being imprisoned for two years, he abandoned his revolt and produced poetry for the remainder of his life

• He was murdered by bandits near Baghdad after returning from a visit to Shiraz where he met the Buyid Emir Abdud al-Dawla

969 - 1007 - Al-Hamadhani (All Facts)

• Persian Poet

  • He was nicknamed “the Wonder of the Age”

• He invented the literary form of “Maqamah”

  • These were short anecdotes written in rhyming prose that were inspired by the Quran

• He died at Harat

940 - 1025 - Ferdowsi (All Facts)

• Persian Poet

• He died at Khorasan

940 - 1025 - Ferdowsi: Shah-Nama (All Facts)

• The “Book of Kings,” which uses legend and history in verse

• It charts the history of Persia from its mythical origins up to the Arab conquest

• It became a model for Arab epics

• It came about from a revival of Persian poetry using the Arabic alphabet, which it used

980 - 1037 - Avicenna (All Facts)

• He was an eclectic Muslim thinker and physician

  • He was nicknamed “The Great Master”

  • He was a human encyclopedia

  • He was born in Alshana, near Bokhara

  • He spoke Persian

• Wrote on astronomy, physics, and medicine

  • He taught himself medicine

  • He practiced medicine

  • He earned a living by giving medical consultations

• He mastered all known science by age 16

  • During the day, he served several princes as minister

  • During the night, he wrote his works, very quickly

• He was famed as a philosopher, influenced by the Greeks

  • He believed that human knowledge could be unlimited

  • He believed that the saint and the sage could both attain perfect clarity equal to that of the Great Prophet Mohammed

• He was particularly revered as the greatest medical mind at the times through his treatises published in his “Canon of Medicine”

• His theories and methods were taught in Europe for the next 700 years after his death

• He was often envied and forced to flee and hide

• He spent his later years at Isfahan

• He died at Hamadan

  • He was mourned throughout the Islamic World

1025 - Avicenna: Canon of Medicine (All Facts)

• Book consisting of a series of treatises on

  • The pulse

  • Fevers

  • Symptoms

  • Diagnoses

  • Wounds

  • Fractures

  • Bites

  • Poisons

  • Diarrhea

1027 - Avicenna: The Book of Healing (All Facts)

• Monumental encyclopedia elaborating many Aristotelian theories of philosophy and medicine

965 - 1038 - Alhazen: Optical Thesaurus (All Facts)

• First important work on dioptric (the optics of the eye)

• It influenced the work of Roger Bacon

973 - 1050 - Al-Biruni (All Facts)

• Islamic Scholar

  • He was born in Khwarazm

  • He became fluent in Greek and Arabic

• Wrote on philosophy, astronomy, astrology, geography, history, mathematics, chemistry, and botany

• He was the first botanist to analyze the structure of flowers by methods important to plant classification

• He discovered Chess while in India and brought it back to the Islamic World and Europe

• His work “Tarikh-ul-Hind” was one of his most famous, it was a handbook on India

• His brilliance was recognized by Mahmud of the Ghaznavid Empire

  • He followed Mahmud of Ghazni and his armies

  • He learned Sanskrit and studied Indian philosophy

973 - 1057 - Al-Maarri (All Facts)

• Islamic Arab Poet and Philosopher

• Lived over 50 years in ascetic seclusion

  • He was blinded by smallpox at the age of four

• He was a nihilist

  • He wrote that human life and nature were the vanities of the world

  • He wrote cynically, “Better for Adam and all who issued forth from his loins that he and they never had been created!”

  • He refused to compromiser his beliefs for money

973 - 1057 - Al-Maarri: Luzumiyyat (All Facts)

• Written to glorify God, it was the namesake author’s antidote to the conventional poets’ preoccupation with love, battle, and frivolity as it was intensely dark and cynical

1048 - 1131 - Omar Khayyam (All Facts)

• Persian Poet and Polymath (Mathematician and Astrologer) in the Seljuk Empire

  • He was born at Nishapur in eastern Persia

• His most famous work is the “Rubaiyat”

  • He is known for his having written and introduced the “quatrain” (a type of stanza consisting of four lines) in Persian and Islamic poetic tradition, which first appears in this work

• He solved cubic equations by geometric methods

• He worked in the sultan’s court in Merv, having reformed the Muslim calendar

  • He headed a committee of scientists appointed by the shah to reform the calendar

• He was / is known for his major treatise on algebra

1048 - 1131 - Omar Khayyam: Rubaiyat (All Facts)

• Work consisting of 500+ quatrains which express a rational, pessimistic, and hedonistic philosophy

  • These ideas were unacceptable to orthodox Islam at the time the work was published

  • These quatrains celebrated the pleasures of life with a touch of melancholy

    • In one, he tells an apocryphal story of how wine was first discovered by a king who planted seeds left by a grateful phoenix which he saved

1077 - 1166 - Abdul Qadir Jilani (All Facts)

• Founder of the Qadirriya suborder of Sufism

1126 - 1198 - Ibn Rushd / Averroes (All Facts)

• Islamic Scholar of Umayyad Spain (Al-Andalus)

  • He was born, raised, and worked in Cordoba

  • He quickly became a favor of the Almohad Caliphs including Abu Yaqub and his successor Yaqub al-Mansur

  • At the height of his powers, however, the namesake found himself briefly out of favor with Yaqub al-Mansur and chose self-exile in Marrakesh, in which it is believed that he was bracketed along with traditionalist philosophers by the caliph Yaqub al-Mansur

  • He believed that the traditionalists were opposed to his own philosophical viewpoint and were not being sufficiently dynamic in mobilizing Islam against the mounting Christian offensive or “Reconquista” in Al-Andalus (Spain)

  • He thus chose Marrakesh because the more liberal and open atmosphere there was more conducive to the line of thought he had developed

  • He was eventually recalled back to Spain by Caliph Yaqub al-Mansur

  • He died in Marrakesh

• He wrote influential works on law, secular philosophy, and the natural sciences

  • He was the greatest philosopher and scientist of his day

  • He was the leader of Arabic science and the major encyclopedist of his day

  • His scientific writings led to his namesake school of scientific thought in Europe

  • He was well-known for his commentaries on Aristotle, which influenced Maimonides

• He believed that God made the universe and it was for physical scientists to explain how it came about

• He argued that reason could serve to establish religious truths

1135 - 1204 - Maimonides / Rambam (All Facts)

• Jewish Scholar of Almoravid Spain

• He developed a synthesis of Aristotle’s reasoning with biblical interpretation

• He was influenced by Ibn Rushd / Averroes

• He influenced St. Thomas Aquinas

1143 - 1236 - Mu'in al-Din Chishti (All Facts)

• Persian Islamic scholar, mystic, and ascetic

• Founder of his namesake Sufi order, in which

  • he developed nine ascetic rules requiring disciples to

    • forsake money

    • never seek help

    • never possess more worldly goods than were required for a single day

  • its disciples wanted to spread the namesake’s message throughout India

• He died at Ajmir in Rajastahn

• He preached the mystic Sufi message, propounding a transcendental unity of being

1165 - 1240 - Ibn Arabi (All Facts)

• Sunni Arab Muslim Scholar, Philosopher, and Poet and Sufi Mystic

• He was born in Murcia

• He spent most of his life reading, writing, and meditating

• He believed in a God free of all attribute

• For Muslim fundamentalists of his era, his works were heretical

1165 - 1240 - Ibn Arabi: The Bezels of Wisdom (All Facts)

• Work which is learned and metaphysical, it defines the doctrines of Sufism

• Work which sets out a Sufi view of the lives of 28 prophets from Adam to Mahomet

1201 - 1274 - Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (All Facts)

• Persian Polymath during the Golden Age of the Abbasid Caliphate

  • He was one of the most celebrated scholars during the Islamic Golden Age

• He contributed to astronomy, law, logic, ethics, mathematics, philosophy, and medicine

• During his time, he had directed the building of an observatory which

  • Was the most advanced in the world at the time

  • Produced the most accurate astronomical charts

• He studied the relationship between the lengths of the sides of a triangle and the angles, having laid the groundwork for (spherical) trigonometry as a mathematical discipline

1304 - 1369 - Ibn Battuta (All Facts)

• Islamic Explorer and Scholar

• He was from Morocco

• He was well versed in Shariah (Islamic Law)

• Islamic governments in Mogadishu and Delhi sought his advice and welcomed him to their lands

• His travelogue demonstrated how Islam’s phenomenal growth increased connections among cultures of Asia, Africa, and southern Europe

• His accounts made it clear that African societies that had adopted Islam kept many of their own traditions

1332 - 1406 - Ibn Khaldun (All Facts)

• Islamic Scholar of the Mamluk Sultanate

• He founded the fields of histography (the study of the methods of historians) and sociology

1456 - 1517- 'A'isha al-Ba'uniyya (All Facts)

• Sufi Poet and Mystic of the Mamluk Sultanate

• She is regarded by many as the most prolific female Muslim writer prior to the 1900s

• Many of her words describe her journey toward mystical illumination

• Her poetry reflected a contrast between most Muslims and Sufis

1456 - 1517- 'A'isha al-Ba'uniyya: Clear Inspiration, on Praise of the Trusted One (All Facts)

• Work which is the namesake author’s best known

• It consists of a long poem honoring the Great Prophet Muhammad

• It refers to many previous poets, reflecting the namesake author’s broad learning

1203 - 1273 - Rumi (All Facts)

• Founder of the “Whirling Dervishes” or “Mevlevi Order” or “Mawlawites” of Sufism

  • Spring up a mystical Islamic fraternity or “Tariqah” at Konya (the ancient city of Iconium in Anatolia)

• Persian Mystic and Poet

1253 - 1325 - Amir Khusrau (All Facts)

• Indo-Persian Sufi Mystic, Writer, Poet, and Composer

  • He composed poetry for six different Delhi sultans

  • He was nicknamed the “Parrot of India”

• He was the first artist to reflect the absorption of Islam into Indian life by mixing mystic themes and images from both cultures

• His poetry and songs gained huge popularity

• He is famous for his many works and stories such as “Laila and Majnun” and “Shirin and Khusrau”

• His devotion to the Sufis, a liberal Muslim sect, inspired his best work

• He was buried close to the grave of Nizamuddin Auliya

1304 - 1369 - Ibn Battuta (All Facts)

• Moroccan Muslim Traveler, Explorer, Geographer, and Scholar of the Marinid Sultanate

  • He was born in Tangiers

• He was famous for his travels to Mecca, North Africa, Palestine, Persia, southern Russia, India, China, Indonesia, East Africa, and Spain

• He was a part-time traveler and part-time unofficial ambassador for the Marinid Sultans

• He set out on his final journey at Sijilmasa, where his caravan set out across the Sahara, met a man whose brother had given him hospitality in China, and saw the mines at Taghaza where the salt is hewn, which, exchanged kilo for kilo for gold made Mali so rich; and in the southern sands his caravan almost perished for thirst

  • In spite of the food, which he found disgusting, he appeared to have liked Mali very much, explaining that the “negroes have an abhorrence of injustice,” that the roads were safe, the merchants were honest, the women beautiful, and the “men possess no sexual jealousy”

1325 - 1390 - Hafez Shirazi (All Facts)

• Persian Muslim Poet and Mystic

• He is regarded as the greatest master of the Persian “Ghazal,” a lyrical short poem characterized by mysticism, richness, and subtlety of imagery

• His work frequently depicted themes of love and wine

• He died at Shiraz

1332 - 1406 - Ibn Khaldun (All Facts)

• Arab Historian, Diplomat, Judge, Administrator, Philosopher, and Sociologist

• He was born in Tunis under the Hafsid Dynasty, unto a family of Spanish Arabs

• He held high office in Morocco, Spain, and Egypt; in which he gained experiences which influenced his best known work

1377 - Ibn Khaldun: Muqaddimah (All Facts)

• Three-volume history of the Arabs, Persians, and Berbers

  • The first volume is the namesake author’s most famous, because it presents a new theory of historical development, taking notice of physical influences such as climate and geography, as well as moral and intellectual ones

    • In it, he endeavored to formulate the cycles of national progress and decay

    • He can be said to have discovered the true scope and nature of history and society