Hisham ibn al-Hakam
?–795 CE · Kufa
Hisham ibn al-Hakam (died traditionally around 179 AH / 795 CE) was one of the earliest and most influential theologians (mutakallim, a practitioner of kalam, speculative or "dialectical" theology) of Imami Shi'i Islam. Born in Kufa in southern Iraq to a family of mawali (non-Arab "clients" attached to an Arab tribe, here the Kinda), he grew up in nearby Wasit and traded between Kufa and Baghdad.
Imami tradition presents him as a devoted disciple of two of the Imams that Twelver Shi'is regard as the rightful successors to the Prophet Muhammad: Ja'far al-Sadiq (died 148/765) and his son Musa al-Kazim (died 183/799). He is widely credited as the first to bring the question of the imamate — who must lead the community after the Prophet — into formal theological debate. Whether the imamate is divinely appointed is a matter Sunnis and Shi'is dispute; the site presents it as a position held, not a settled fact.
Hisham was a famed polemicist who debated Mu'tazili rationalists, Kharijites and others. He drew lasting controversy: heresiographers such as al-Ash'ari reported that he and his followers (the "Hishamiyya") held God to be a body (jism). Later Shi'i scholars, including al-Sharif al-Murtada, argued these reports were exaggerated or misread rhetorical arguments. The accusation remains debated. Forced from Baghdad late in life, he is said to have died in hiding in Kufa; the exact year is disputed (179, 183, 188, or 199 AH are all reported).
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Kufa
What they did here
Born in the early 2nd century AH (early 8th century CE) into a family of mawali (non-Arab clients) attached to the Kinda tribe rooted in Kufa. The sources conflict on the exact birthplace: some report Kufa, while others (the more commonly cited Imami tradition) say he was born and raised in Wasit with only his family rooted in Kufa. The birth year is not recorded; it is placed only generally in the early 100s AH.
About Kufa
Kufa, on the Euphrates in central Iraq near Najaf, was a garrison-town (misr) founded by the Muslims around 638 during the conquest of Iraq. It became a major centre of early Arabic grammar, jurisprudence, and Shi'i scholarship, and for a time the capital of the caliph Ali; the traditionist Ibn Abi Shayba (d. 849) and the Twelver scholar Ibn Babawayh al-Saduq (d. 991) are among those connected to it.
Across the traditions, in Kufa at the same time
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Hisham ibn al-Hakam’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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