Ibn Aqil (1040–1119) was an Islamic scholar and

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

from

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

. He was trained in the tenets of the Hanbali

school A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...

for eleven years under scholars such as the Qadi

Abu Ya'la ibn al-Farra' Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn Ibn al-Farrāʾ (April 990 – 15 August 1066), commonly known as al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā or simply as Ibn al-Farrāʾ, was a Hanbali Jurist, Athari theologian. Abu Ya'la was a scholar, judge, and one o ...

. Despite this, Ibn Aqil was forced into hiding by the traditionalist Hanbalis for frequenting the circles of groups who were at odds with the Hanbali tradition. In one of his reminiscences, he remarks that his Hanbali companions wanted him to abandon the company of certain scholars, and complains that it hindered him from acquiring useful knowledge. Ibn Aqil studied with Hanbalis,

Hanafis The Hanafi school or Hanafism is the oldest and largest Madhhab, school of Islamic jurisprudence out of the four schools within Sunni Islam. It developed from the teachings of the Faqīh, jurist and theologian Abu Hanifa (), who systemised the ...

Shafi'is The Shafi'i school or Shafi'i Madhhab () or Shafi'i is one of the four major schools of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), belonging to the Ahl al-Hadith tradition within Sunni Islam. It was founded by the Muslim scholar, jurist, and traditionist ...

, Mu'tazilis, and Sufis, and was described by Ibn Taymiyya as more knowledgeable than

al-Ghazali Al-Ghazali ( – 19 December 1111), archaically Latinized as Algazelus, was a Shafi'i Sunni Muslim scholar and polymath. He is known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsults, legal theoreticians, muftis, philosophers, the ...

. His early teachers included three women scholars: al-Huraniyya, Bint al-Junayyid, and Bint al-Gharrad. Ibn Aqil had completed five years of undergraduate study and seven years of graduate study in law, but at that time, for a candidate to qualify for a professorial position in law, one normally needed fifteen years of graduate level study in jurisprudence. Ibn ‘Aqil, despite being younger than all the other professorial candidates, was selected to occupy the professorial chair at the Mosque of the Caliph al-Mansur, and with this, Ibn ‘Aqil became the head of the Hanbali school in Baghdad.

Creed

Ibn 'Aqil leaned strongly toward

Ash'arism Ash'arism (; ) is a school of theology in Sunni Islam named after Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, a Shāfiʿī jurist, reformer (''mujaddid''), and scholastic theologian, in the 9th–10th century. It established an orthodox guideline, based on ...

; he had signed, around 455, the fatwa protesting against its

persecution Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these term ...

, and it was he who, in 476, performed the ablutions on the body of his friend, Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi, the Ash'arite rector of the Nizamiyya. His forced retraction represents one episode in the struggle carried on by Hanbalites against Ash'arite Shafi'ites, who got back at them five years later when Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi succeeded in getting Abu Ja'far ibn Abi Musa arrested.

Works

Among his works of

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...

that have survived are ''Wadih fi usul al-fiqh'' and (in part) ''Kitab al-funun'', a huge collection of anecdotes about the attitudes and customs of his times, in one hundred volumes. In it he writes: Truly, it is not lawful for me to waste a single moment of my life; so that when my tongue is not engaged in instructive conversation and disputation, or my sight in studying, I engage my mind in meditation in my moments of rest, lying down, only to rise with some thought having occurred to me which I then commit to paper. In the eighth decade of my life, I do indeed experience a zeal for learning more intense than that experienced when I was a young man of twenty.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aqil, Ibn Asharis Hanbalis 12th-century Muslim theologians Sunni imams Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam Ibn Aqil 11th-century Muslim theologians 11th-century people from the Abbasid Caliphate 11th century in Iraq Ibn Aqil Ibn Aqil