al-'Allama al-Hilli

Jamal al-Din al-Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn al-Mutahhar, known by the honorific title al-'Allama ("the most learned"), was a leading Twelver (Imami) Shi'i scholar of jurisprudence (fiqh), legal theory (usul al-fiqh) and rational theology (kalam). He was born in 648 AH (1250 CE) in Hilla, then a flourishing center of Shi'i learning in Iraq, and died there in 726 AH (1325 CE); these dates are unanimously reported in the biographical tradition. He began studying with his father and his maternal uncle, the jurist al-Muhaqqiq al-Hilli. He is also traditionally associated with the polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi as a teacher of logic, philosophy and astronomy, though modern scholarship treats the nature of this link cautiously — some accounts describe direct study, while others speak only of indirect exposure to the intellectual circles around al-Tusi and the Maragha observatory. He is credited by tradition with an enormous output — later biographers speak of hundreds of titles — including the legal works Mukhtalaf al-Shi'a and Tadhkirat al-Fuqaha', the theological primer al-Bab al-Hadi 'Ashar, and Kashf al-Murad, a commentary on al-Tusi's creed. After about 705 AH (1305 CE) he was drawn into the court of the Mongol Ilkhanid ruler Oljeitu (Sultan Muhammad Khudabanda), for whom he wrote works at the new capital Sultaniyya. Shi'i sources hold that his debates with Sunni scholars led Oljeitu to embrace Twelver Shi'ism and briefly make it the state religion; how decisive his personal role was is debated by modern historians. After the sultan's death (716 AH) he returned to Hilla, where he taught until his death. He was buried near the shrine of Imam 'Ali in Najaf.