Ibn Hawshab
?–914 CE · Kufa
Ibn Hawshab — fuller name al-Hasan ibn Faraj ibn Hawshab, later honored as Mansur al-Yaman ("the Conqueror of Yemen") — was one of the most important early missionaries (da'is, "summoners") of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. He is best known from a sira, an autobiographical account quoted by later writers, which is the main source for his life but also a partisan one.
According to this account he was born near Kufa in southern Iraq, into a Twelver Shia family, and earned his living as a craftsman. The death of the eleventh Twelver imam in 874 without a clear heir reportedly threw him into a crisis of faith, and an Ismaili agent won him over to the movement, which preached the imminent coming of a mahdi (a divinely guided restorer).
Around 881 he was sent on mission to Yemen, traveling by way of the Mecca pilgrimage and landing first at Aden. From bases in the western highlands he built a network of followers and fortified strongholds, and by the 890s controlled much of the region in the name of the hidden Ismaili imam, earning his honorific title.
His later years were marked by conflict with his former colleague Ali ibn al-Fadl, who broke away and besieged him. He died in 914 (302 AH). Sunni and Ismaili traditions assess him very differently — as either a heroic founder or a subversive — and several theological works attributed to him are of uncertain authorship.
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Kufa
What they did here
His own autobiographical sira places his origins in a village near Kufa in southern Iraq, in a Twelver Shia family of modest means (reported variously as a linen-weaver or carpenter). His birth year is not recorded. The account of his conversion to Ismailism — won over by an old man as he read the Qur'an by the Euphrates after the 874 death of the eleventh Twelver imam left the community in crisis — comes from this same partisan source and is traditional rather than independently attested (Halm 1991; EI2/Madelung).
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.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Ibn Hawshab’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Islamic world
- Qusta ibn Luqa· 820 CE–912 CE
- Al-Buhturi· 821 CE–897 CE
- al-Tirmidhi· 824 CE–892 CE
- Abu Ya'la al-Mawsili· 825 CE–919 CE
- Thabit ibn Qurra· 826 CE–901 CE
- Al-Mubarrad· 826 CE–898 CE
- Ibn Qutayba· 828 CE–889 CE
- al-Nasa'i· 830 CE–915 CE
- al-Junayd al-Baghdadi· 830 CE–910 CE
- Ibn Khuzayma· 838 CE–924 CE
- Al-Tabari· 839 CE–923 CE
- Hasan al-Askari· 846 CE–874 CE
- Abu Ali al-Jubba'i· 849 CE–915 CE
- Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi· 853 CE–933 CE
- al-Maturidi· 853 CE–944 CE
- al-Hallaj· 858 CE–922 CE
- Al-Battani· 858 CE–929 CE
- al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya· 859 CE–911 CE
- al-Hadi ila al-Haqq Yahya· 859 CE–911 CE
- Ibn Mujahid· 859 CE–936 CE
- Abu Bakr al-Razi· 865 CE–925 CE
- Al-Ya'qubi· –905 CE
- Abu Bakr al-Bazzar· –905 CE
- Al-Baladhuri· –892 CE
Christian world
Hindu world
Jewish world
Scientists
Buddhist world
Rulers world
- Abdullah ibn Muhammad· 844 CE–912 CE
- al-Mu'tadid· 854 CE–902 CE
- Oleg of Novgorod (Oleg the Prophet)· –912 CE
- Alfred the Great· 849 CE–899 CE
- Leo VI the Wise· 866 CE–912 CE
- al-Mu'tamid· 842 CE–892 CE
- al-Mundhir· 842 CE–888 CE
- Taejo of Goryeo (Wang Geon)· 877 CE–943 CE
- Igor of Kiev· 877 CE–945 CE
- al-Muqtadir· 895 CE–932 CE
- Rurik· –879 CE
- al-Mutawakkil· 822 CE–861 CE
- Olga of Kiev· 890 CE–969 CE
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.