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Ibn Hazm

Ibn Hazm

994 CE–1064 CE · Cordoba

Ibn Hazm (Abu Muhammad 'Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Hazm, 384-456 AH / 994-1064 CE) was one of the towering minds of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus): a jurist, theologian, historian, poet, and writer on comparative religion. He was born in Cordoba into a high official's family during the last years of the Umayyad caliphate of the West. When that order collapsed into civil war, his fortunes rose and fell with it. He was a partisan of the Umayyad cause and reportedly served briefly as vizier (chief minister) to the short-lived caliph 'Abd al-Rahman V in 1023, after whose murder he was imprisoned; he was jailed more than once on suspicion of Umayyad loyalism. These reversals pushed him through exile in Almeria, Aznalcazar, and Xativa, where around 1027 he composed Tawq al-Hamama ("The Ring of the Dove"), a celebrated meditation on love. In jurisprudence (fiqh) he first followed the Maliki and then the Shafi'i schools before becoming the foremost exponent of the Zahiri school, which held that law should rest on the plain ("zahir") sense of Qur'an and hadith rather than on analogy. His combative writings, especially against the dominant Maliki establishment, made enemies: the ruler al-Mu'tadid of Seville had his books publicly burned. Withdrawing to his family estate near Huelva, he wrote prolifically until his death in 1064. Tradition credits him with some 400 works.

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Stop 1 of 2994–1013Born

CordobaקורדובהAl-Andalus, Spain

What they did here

Born in Cordoba on 7 November 994 (384 AH) into a family of high officials of the Umayyad caliphate; he grew up there during the caliphate's civil war and political collapse. Biographical tradition reports that he held high office (the sources are not uniform on whether the title was formally 'vizier') under the short-lived Umayyad claimants, including 'Abd al-Rahman V al-Mustazhir around 1023, and that he was imprisoned more than once on suspicion of Umayyad loyalism. He continued to return to and depart from Cordoba as its fortunes shifted.

About Cordoba

Córdoba, on the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, southern Spain, came under Roman rule in the 3rd century BCE and, as Colonia Patricia, became capital of the province of Baetica; Seneca was a native. Taken by Muslim forces in 711 or 712, it became the seat of the Umayyad emirate founded by Abd al-Rahman I in 756 and of the caliphate proclaimed in 929, which ended in 1031. Its Great Mosque was begun in the 780s. The city was the birthplace of the Islamic scholars Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), later its chief judge, and the Quran commentator al-Qurtubi, and of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (usually dated 1138). Ferdinand III of Castile captured Córdoba in 1236, and the mosque became a cathedral.

Across the traditions, in Cordoba at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Ibn Hazm’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 Ibn Hazm’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(32)