the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Encyclopedias
Hasan Ul
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or HASAN UL-Basri [Abu Sa l ad ul-Hasan ibn Abi - 1 - Hasan Vassar ul-Basri], (642 -728 or 737), Arabian theologian, was born at Medina. His father was a freedman of Zaid ibn Thabit, one of the Ansar (Helpers of the Prophet), his mother a client of Umm Salama, a wife of Mahomet. Tradition says that Umm Salama often nursed Masan in his infancy. He was thus one of the Tabi`un (i.e. of the generation that succeeded the Helpers). He became a teacher of Basra and founded a school there. Among his pupils was Wasil ibn `Ata, the founder of the Mo'tazilites. He himself was a great supporter of orthodoxy and the most important representative of asceticism in the time of its first development. With 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. Many writers testify to the purity of his life and to his excelling in the virtues of Mahomet'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 Omayyads and a believer in the election of the caliph.
His life is given in Nawawi's Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wiistenfeld, Göttingen, 1842-1847). Cf. R. Dozy, Essai sur l'histoire de l'islamisme, pp. 201 sqq. (Leiden and Paris, 1879); A. von Kremer, Culturgeschichtliche Streifziige, p. 5 seq.; R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, pp. 225-227 (London, 1907). (G. W. T.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Hasan Ul'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/h/hasan-ul.html. 1910.
