HASAN AL-BASRI, AL-

born 642, Medina, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia] died 728, Basra, Iraq in full Abu Sa'id ibn Abi al-Hasan Yasar al-Basri deeply pious and ascetic Muslim who was one of the most important relgious figures in early Islam. Hasan was born nine years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. One year after the Battle of Siffin (657), he moved to Basra, a military camp town situated 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the Persian Gulf. From this base, military expeditions to the east disembarked, and, as a young man (670673), Hasan participated in some of the expeditions that led to the conquest of eastern Iran. After his return to Basra, Hasan became a central figure in the religious, social, and political upheavals brought about by internal conflicts with the Muslim community. The years 684704 marked the period of his great preaching activity. From the few remaining fragments of his sermons, which are among the best examples of early Arabic prose, there emerges the portrait of a deeply sensitive, religious Muslim. For Hasan, the true Muslim must not only refrain from committing sin but he must live in a state of lasting anxiety, brought about by the certainty of death and the uncertainty of his destiny in the hereafter. Hasan said that the world is treacherous, for it is like to a snake, smooth to the touch, but its venom is deadly. The practice of religious self-examination (muhasabah), which led to the activity of avoiding evil and doing good, coupled with a wariness of the world, marked Hasan's piety and influenced later ascetic and mystical attitudes in Islam. The enemy of Islam, for Hasan, was not the infidel but the hypocrite (munafiq), who took his religion lightly and is here with us in the rooms and streets and markets. In the important freedom-determinism debate, he took the position that man is totally responsible for his actions, and he systematically argued this position in an important letter written to the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik. His letter, which is the earliest extant theological treatise in Islam, attacks the widely held view that God is the sole creator of man's actions. The document bears political overtones and shows that in early Islam theological disputes emerged from the politico-religious controversies of the day. His political opinions, which were extensions of his religious views, often placed him in precarious situations. During the years 705714, Hasan was forced into hiding because of the stance he took regarding the policies of the powerful governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj. After the governor's death, Hasan came out of hiding and continued to live in Basra until he died. It is said that the people of Basra were so involved with the observance of his funeral that no afternoon prayer was said in the mosque because no one was there to pray. Al-Hasan al-Basri was known to his own generation as an eloquent preacher, a paragon of the truly pious Muslim, and an outspoken critic of the political rulers of the Umayyad dynasty (AD 661750). Among later generations of Muslims, he has been remembered for his piety and religious asceticism. Muslim mystics have counted him as one of their first and most notable spiritual masters. Both the Mu'tazilah (philosophical theologians) and the Ash'ariyah (followers of the theologian al-Ash'ari), the two most important theological schools in early Sunnite (traditionalist) Islam, consider Hasan one of their founders. David A. Ede The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Additional reading Important Western-language studies are Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism (1994), a work originally published in French in the 1950s that examines al-Hasan's place in Islamic mysticism; and H. Ritter, Hasan al-Basri, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 3, pp. 247248 (1970), with a bibliography.