al-Warjilani
?–c. 1175 CE · Tunis
Abu Ya'qub Yusuf ibn Ibrahim al-Sadrati al-Warjilani was a Maghribi scholar of the Ibadi branch of Islam — a tradition, distinct from both Sunni and Shia, that traces itself to the early Kharijite movement and survives today mainly in the Mzab valley of Algeria, on the island of Jerba (Tunisia), and in Oman. His nisba (the place-name attached to his name) points to Warjalan (Wargla) and the nearby town of Sadrata, oasis settlements in the Algerian Sahara that were then centres of Ibadi learning. Sources place his death around 570 AH (1175 CE); the date is a traditional estimate and is marked "circa." His birth date is not recorded.
He is remembered for two achievements. First, he composed al-Dalil wa'l-burhan ("The Guide and the Proof"), a work of kalam (rational theology) that systematically set out Ibadi positions on faith, grave sin, the divine attributes, and the vision of God; later writers admired it and compared it to the great Sunni theologians al-Ghazali and al-Baqillani. Second, he is traditionally credited with arranging and supplementing the hadith collection attributed to al-Rabi' ibn Habib, producing the ordered recension that Ibadis call Tartib al-Musnad — for them the foremost collection of Prophetic reports. He is also assigned a theological-juridical synthesis, al-Mujaz. Reports that he studied in Tunis before returning home, and later traditions of travel further afield, are part of the biographical record but are not uniformly attested.
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TunisתוניסיהTunisia
What they did here
Reference works report that he studied in Tunis before returning to Warjalan, where he is said to have stimulated an Ibadi intellectual revival that drew students from across the Maghrib, especially Jerba. Reported in the biographical tradition rather than firmly dated.
About Tunis
Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, lies on the Mediterranean beside the ruins of ancient Carthage. In Roman times Carthage became an early centre of Christianity. After the Arab conquest of 698, Tunis grew around the Zaytuna Mosque, whose school became a major centre of Islamic learning in North Africa. From 1229 the city was capital of the Hafsid kingdom, the birthplace of the historian Ibn Khaldun in 1332, and a refuge for Andalusian Muslims and Jews. Its Jewish community, centred on the Hara quarter, was later joined by merchants from Livorno known as Grana. Tunis passed to the Ottomans in 1574, became a French protectorate in 1881 and the capital of independent Tunisia in 1956.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with al-Warjilani’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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