Skip to content
Wellsprings
al-Mufid

al-Mufid

948 CE–1022 CE · Baghdad

Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Nu'man, known as al-Shaykh al-Mufid ("the beneficial one") and Ibn al-Mu'allim ("son of the schoolteacher"), was the foremost scholar of Twelver (Imami) Shia Islam in his generation. Twelver Shia are the largest Shia branch, who hold that religious authority passed through twelve designated Imams from the family of the Prophet Muhammad. Sources report he was born in 336 AH (948 CE) in 'Ukbara, a town north of Baghdad, though the later scholar al-Tusi gives 338 AH; he moved as a youth to Baghdad, then ruled by the Buyids, a dynasty sympathetic to Shia scholarship, and spent his whole career there.

Al-Mufid led the Imami community of Baghdad as both jurist (faqih) and theologian. He is remembered for bringing the disciplined methods of kalam (speculative theology), partly learned from Mu'tazili teachers, to bear on Shia doctrine, while parting from the Mu'tazila over the Imamate. His students al-Sharif al-Murtada and al-Shaykh al-Tusi became pillars of later Shia learning. Many works are attributed to him; among those that survive are the legal compendium al-Muqni'a, the creedal Awa'il al-Maqalat, Tashih al-I'tiqad, and al-Irshad on the Imams.

He died in Baghdad on 3 Ramadan 413 AH (1022 CE). Tradition holds that an immense crowd attended his funeral, led by al-Murtada. He was buried near the shrine of the Imams at al-Kazimiyya, where his tomb remains.

See al-Mufid’s journey on the map →

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →

Stop 1 of 2948–1022Studied And Taught

BaghdadIraq

What they did here

Al-Mufid moved as a youth to Baghdad, then under Buyid rule, and spent his entire scholarly life there. He studied under Ibn Qulawayh and (briefly) Ibn Babawayh al-Saduq, and with Mu'tazili teachers including al-Rummani; he became the recognized head of the Twelver community and taught al-Sharif al-Murtada and al-Tusi.

About Baghdad

Baghdad, on the Tigris, is the capital of modern Iraq. The Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded it in 762 as his capital, and for five centuries it was a leading centre of Islamic learning, with the House of Wisdom, the Nizamiyya madrasa and many jurists, Sufis and scientists; Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, eponym of the Qadiriyya order, is buried there. The Mongol sack of 1258 ended the caliphate, and the city later passed to Ottoman rule. It was also a seat of the patriarchs of the Church of the East and of the exilarch who headed Babylonian Jewry. Its Jewish community, whose foremost nineteenth-century rabbi was Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai), almost entirely emigrated to Israel in 1950-52.

Across the traditions, in Baghdad at the same time

See other sages who lived in Baghdad→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with al-Mufid’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with al-Mufid’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(44)