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Biography of Abu al- Hasan Ali al- Ashari
Name: Abu al- Hasan Ali al- Ashari
Birth Date: c. 873
Death Date: 935
Place of Birth: Basra, Iraq
Nationality: Iraqi
Gender: Male
Occupations: theologian
Abu al- Hasan Ali al- Ashari
The Moslem theologian Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Ashari (ca. 873-935) defended the basic Islamic belief that the Koran is the revealed book of God and that upon it and the Traditions of the Prophet the religion of Islam must be based.Al-Ashari seems to have been born in Basra, in present-day Iraq. As was the custom, his education commenced with long exposure to the Koran and the collected Traditions of the Prophet and his Companions. Having mastered these, al-Ashari became a student of the head of the Mutazilite, or rationalist, school in Basra; eventually he would have succeeded his master had he not experienced a reconversion to the traditionalist position of Islam. This crisis in his life is said to have occurred in 912-913, and al-Ashari gave public notice of his intention to attack the Mutazilites from the pulpit. He spent the remainder of his life composing theological polemics against the enemies of …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…was to make respectable in the eyes of the traditionalists the rationalist apparatus as long as it was employed to support an Islam firmly based upon those two foundations. Further Reading The work which best places al-Ashari within his historical and intellectual context is Walter C. Klein's translation of al-Ashari's Al-lbanah An Usul ad-Diyanah (1940). Two other books by al-Ashari were translated, with valuable notes, by Richard J. McCarthy, The Theology of al-Ashari (1953). A few other works by al-Ashari exist in Arabic, but they have not been translated into Western languages; the bulk of his writings have been lost. In English the most accessible sampling of al-Ashari's ideas, as well as those of other Moslem theologians, may be found in John Alden Williams, ed., Islam (1961). Al-Ashari's importance to early Islamic theology is discussed in W. Montgomery Watt, Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam (1948). See also his Islamic Philosophy and Theology (1962).
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