Islamic World: Notable Scholars (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

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

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

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

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 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

• 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

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