Al-Muhasibi

al-Ḥārith al-Muhāsibī
المحاسبي
Personal
Born781 CE
170 AH
Basra, Abbasid Caliphate (now Basra, Basra Governorate, Iraq)
Died857 CE (aged 73)
243 AH
Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate
ReligionIslam
EraIslamic Golden Age
RegionAbbasid Caliphate
DenominationSunni
JurisprudenceShafi'i
CreedKullabi[1]
Main interest(s)Sufism, Aqidah, Kalam (Islamic Theology)
Notable idea(s)Baghdad School of Islamic philosophy, Muhasabah
Notable work(s)Kitab al-Khalwa, Kitab al-Ri`aya li-huquq Allah, Kitab al-Wasaya
Muslim leader
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Al-Muḥāsibī (Arabic: المحاسبي) (781–857 CE) was a Muslim Arab, theologian, philosopher and ascetic. He is considered to be the founder of the Baghdad School of Islamic philosophy which combined Kalam and Sufism, and a teacher of the Sufi masters Junayd al-Baghdadi and Sirri Saqti.

His full name is Abu Abdullah Harith bin Asad bin Abdullah al-Anizi al-Basri, and he hailed from the Arab Anazzah tribe. He was born in Basra in about 781. Muhasibi means self-inspection or audit. He was a founder of what later became the mainstream Sufi doctrine, and influenced many subsequent theologians, such as al-Ghazali.

The author of approximately 200 works,[3] he wrote about theology and Tasawwuf (Sufism), among them Kitab al-Khalwa and Kitab al-Ri`aya li-huquq Allah ("Obeying God's Permits").

  1. ^ a b Yücedoğru, Tevfik. "Ebu’l Abbâs el-Kalânîsî’nin Kelâmî Görüşleri." Review of the Faculty of Theology of Uludag University 20.2 (2011). p.1 "Ibn Kullab al-Basri is the first representative of the new tendency in Islamic theology. Harith b. Asad al-Muhasibi and Abu'l-Abbas al-Qalanisi are the persons who are worth to be mentioned in this context as his followers..."
  2. ^ Van Ess, Josef. "Ibn Kullab et la mihna." Arabica 37.2 (1990): 173-233.
  3. ^ Gavin Picken, Spiritual Purification in Islam: The Life and Works of al-Muhasibi, Routledge (2011), p. 67