al-Iji

Adud al-Din Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad al-Iji (c. 680/1281 - 756/1355) was a Sunni theologian, judge, and scholar of the rational sciences who worked under the Mongol Ilkhanid rulers of Persia. He took his name from Ij (also spelled Ig), a town near Shiraz in the Fars region, where he was born into a family of notables and judges. As a young man he studied in Tabriz, then the Ilkhanid capital, learning grammar and the "rational sciences" (logic, theology, and philosophy as taught in the madrasa). He gained the patronage of the powerful vizier Rashid al-Din Hamadani and taught and served as a judge at the new capital, Sultaniyya.

Al-Iji rose to be chief judge (qadi) of the Ilkhanid realm, and after the dynasty's collapse he settled in Shiraz under the local ruler Abu Ishaq Inju, becoming chief judge there.

He is remembered above all for al-Mawaqif fi ilm al-kalam ("The Stations in the science of theology"), a concise summa of Ash'ari kalam - the school of reasoned Sunni theology founded by al-Ash'ari. Through later commentaries, especially al-Jurjani's, the Mawaqif became a core teaching text in madrasas for centuries.

When Abu Ishaq fell and the rival ruler Mubariz al-Din took Shiraz, al-Iji was imprisoned in a fortress near his home town, where he died around 756/1355. Reports of the exact year and circumstances vary.