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Architects of Civilisation
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Certain individuals stand out in every age as formative thinkers and agents of change. Such foundational figures help shape the structure of a civilization. Knowledge of their lives and deeds may offer food for thought and insight for our own time. This IAIS monthly series provides simple portraits of great Islamic scholars and authorities who were architects of civilisation in their day. 
Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī was born in 1145 H /1732 CE in Belgaon, India, in Karnataka near Goa, and died in 1205/1790. As a young man he migrated to Yemen, to the city of Zabīd along the coastal road to al-Hudaydah, but lived most of his life in Cairo. He was a Naqshbandī Sufi who followed the Ḥanafī legal school, and knew Arabic, Turkish and Persian. His most outstanding work is the Arabic dictionary Tāj al-‛Arūs /The Bride’s Crown.......... [
‛Ā’ishah 
, younger daughter of the prominent Qurashite Abū Bakr (who became the first caliph) and wife of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace upon him) is central to the ‘enterprise’ that is Islam. Her teachings among the first generation of Muslims and her hadith testimony is crucial for understanding lived Islam, especially as it relates to the intimate and private realms. For this reason, she was also surrounded by controversy. Even her biographical details are highly disputed. Did she marry at nine years old, as explicit hadith evidence has it?......... [
SHĀH WALĪ ALLĀH OF DELHI (1703–1762), was a reformist scholar and mystic philosopher of the Indian subcontinent. Praised by Muhammad Iqbal as the first Muslim scholar to “rethink the whole system of Islam without completely breaking with the past”, Walī Allāh‟s intellectual project evinces a deep concern to re-enchant every minutiae of life with glitters of the transcendent. His mission to reform the intellectual and socio-political conditions of his time led him to embark upon an ambitious agenda of illuminating the inner meanings of Islam, through a new discipline of ʿilm asrār al-dīn /the „science of the subtle meanings of religion‟. Underlying the versatility and eclecticism of his writings is a coherent vision affirming diversity within Unity in a civilisational context......... [
Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Saʿid ibn Hazm was born 994 CE (384 AH) in Cordoba (Qurtuba) in Spain and died 1064/456. His son records that he wrote four hundred books, covering 80,000 pages, but very few survived. Ibn Hazm came from a wealthy and influential family. His father served as Minister under Hisham ibn al-Hakam the Ummayad ruler of Andalus. But Hisham’s successor al-Muʿtaḍid who was a repressive ruler took issue with Ibn Hazm on account of his “unorthodox” writings and his opposition to the Maliki doctrine that was then prevalent in Andalus. Ibn Hazm suffered imprisonment and the burning of his books, yet the calibre of his academic legacy increasingly became the focus of scholarly attention down the ages, especially in our own times......... 
Abū Ḥanīfah aroused controversy among Muslim jurists in his own day, especially from certain proponents of Hadith-based jurisprudence (ahl al-hadith) for his advocacy of rationalist procedures in deducing case law. Traditionalist jurists viewed the methods by which Abū Ḥanīfah employed ijtihād al-ra’y ‘independent reasoning exertion’—especially with regard to analogical reasoning (qiyās) and juristic preference (istiḥsān)—as undermining the legal validity of Prophetic traditions in Islamic law. Abū Ḥanīfah was an outspoken critic of errors he perceived among his contemporary judges and legal scholars; while his theological views were also a matter of controversy ........ 
Al-Kindi was a pioneer in chemistry, physics, psycho–somatic therapeutics, geometry, optics, music theory, as well as philosophy of science. His significant mathematical writings greatly facilitated the diffusion of the Indian numerals into S.W. Asia & N. Africa (today called ‘Arabic numerals’). A distinctive feature of his work was the conscious application of mathematics and quantification, and his invention of specific laboratory apparatus to implement experiments. Al-Kindi invented a mathematical scale to quantify the strength of a drug; as well as a system linked ........ 
Muhammad al-Tahir ibn Ashur was born in Tunis 1879 and died in 1973 at the age of 94. He came from a family of scholars, with his grandfather being especially renowned. When he entered Zaytuna, special care was made to provide him the best teachers. He was a teacher at Zaytuna all his life. His masterpiece is the Maqasid al-Sharī`ah al-Islamiyyah, the Intents, or Higher Goals of Islamic Law, published in 1946. He is famous for standing up for the right cause: when the President of Tunisia wanted a fatwa to justify abandoning the fast ........ 
Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. Rajab 204 /20th January 820) had a profound impact on the foundation of Islamic legal theory and played a significant role in the Muslim intellectual scene during the latter-half of the 2nd/8th century. He is revered as nāṣir al-sunnah ‘defender of the Sunnah’ who established one of the foremost legal schools, and is noted for reconciling Hadīth-based jurisprudence with Ijtihād-based fiqh. His integration of received Tradition with Rationalism offers an important model for Muslims today............ 
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