Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni

Abu'l-Ma'ali 'Abd al-Malik al-Juwayni (1028-1085 CE / 419-478 AH) was one of the foremost Sunni jurists and theologians of the eastern Islamic world. He is widely known by the honorific Imam al-Haramayn, "leading master of the two sanctuaries" (Mecca and Medina), a title associated with years he spent teaching there. Born near Nishapur in Khurasan (today's northeastern Iran) into a distinguished scholarly family, he trained first under his father, a noted master of Shafi'i law, one of Sunni Islam's four schools of jurisprudence (madhhabs).

Al-Juwayni followed the Ash'ari school of theology (kalam, speculative theology). Reports hold that during the rule of the Saljuq sultan Tughril Beg, the vizier al-Kunduri instituted a public denunciation, or mihna, of the Ash'aris in Nishapur around the early 1050s, prompting al-Juwayni and other scholars (among them al-Qushayri) to leave the city. After a period that some accounts place in Baghdad, he spent about four years in the Hijaz, teaching at Mecca and Medina, the cities associated with his honorific.

When the pro-Ash'ari vizier Nizam al-Mulk rose to power, al-Juwayni returned to Nishapur to head its new Nizamiyya college, where he taught for the rest of his life — a span of roughly two decades. His most celebrated works are al-Burhan on legal theory (usul al-fiqh) and Nihayat al-Matlab on Shafi'i law; he also wrote the theological al-Irshad. His most famous student was Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. He died in Nishapur in 1085.